A unified fare payment medium will go a long way in unifying the Bay Area’s highly fragmented, 28-agency transit system. From a user perspective, needing to know fare rules and exact change for multiple transit systems makes the daily commute tricky and makes non-routine transit trips to new areas an exercise in information systems research.

Translink is a “one-card to rule them all” approach to replace the existing system monthly passes, paper tickets, magnetic strips and exact change. The system was proposed back in 1993, and and is currently in place for AC Transit, MUNI, and Golden Gate. Twenty-Eight transit systems each with their own schedules, fares and terminology for passes (Eco Pass, EZRider, Fast Pass, etc) doesn’t really make riding transit easier.

Recently, BART hinted that they might be ready to roll out TransLink as soon as a year from now, which would put that in mid-2010. London’s had a system-wide Oyster Card in 2003 and Hong Kong’s Octopus Card launched to the public in 1997.

Lawsuits and vendor issues have stalled BARTs adoption of Translink, and it seems like the recent launch BARTs own EZRider smart card will only serve to confuse riders. Recently, the issue of fare revenue “float” has led to the establishment of a BART specific “e-purse”. (Will I need an “e-purse” to ride “E-BART“)

Hopefully BART will get TransLink rolled out by the Oyster Cards 10 year anniversary and before the next siginificant fare payment technology replaces RFID. Rumors are flying around that a “Soft launch” of TransLink on BART may happen soon, meaning it might just start working without them telling anyone about it.. We’ll post an update here with our results if this happens.