Are metro smart cards really that smart?

Metro and Delhi

Metro has always been a vital part of Delhi; avoiding the busy roads of Delhi, people from all sections of society prefer this mass rapid transit system serving Delhi and its satellite cities of Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Gurugram, Noida, Bahadurgarh, and Ballabhgarh, in the National Capital Region of India for convenient travel across the city and beyond. It is India’s largest and busiest metro, with a daily ridership of over 2.5 million passengers, stretching to over 340 kilometers.

To keep up with technology

The transport department always comes up with new implementations, such as AVM machines in metro stations, standard mobility cards, online smart card recharge, online QR ticket generation, etc. The government also made regulations for the covid time to ensure that ride is safe and easy for commuters. But in this contemporary time, it has become tough to keep up constantly with technology and make developments sustainable.

Solutions created today must be future-ready, but we must become acquainted with future problems. When new solutions are designed, they often give birth to new challenges, but improvising keeps the process going; creating something timeless is not practical. New problems will keep coming, and continuous improvisation is needed in order to deal with them.

But the real question is;

Metro Smart Cards: smart enough?

A Delhi Metro smart card is a rechargeable fare card used to pay for rides on the metro. The smart card prevents passengers from buying a token every time they ride the metro. Instead, the smart card can be purchased at any Delhi Metro station and repeatedly recharged either from the metro help desk or a mobile app requiring further steps to redeem the amount from the machine at the station itself. The smart card offers several benefits, such as discounted fares and not having to stand in long queues for tokens.

Let’s understand how these cards work

What’s the technology behind it?

Delhi metro smart cards work on the RFID technology that uses radio waves to communicate between a device and a reader. The metro smart card is a passive component with a small chip and antenna that can transmit information to the AFC gate, the reader, an active component. When the smart card is tapped against the gate, the gate sends a radio signal to the chip, which powers the chip and allows it to transmit its stored information back to the gate. This information is then used to verify the card and will enable the user to pass through the entrance.

Does the idea of a smart ‘card’ make sense now?

The smart card allows users to use travel services more efficiently, not only on the metro but also by busses, the exact reason it is called a ONE: smart card rather than a metro card. People love it; it makes their travel easy.

It’s almost been a decade since the release of the common mobility smart cards in Delhi, and still, up to 14000 smart cards are sold daily across the city.

The smart cards are made up of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), commonly known as “vinyl.” It is the world’s third most widely produced synthetic plastic polymer.

But the price we pay for a low-cost and seemingly harmless piece of PVC card is far steeper than it may initially appear. PVC is the single most environmentally damaging of all plastics. It contaminates humans and the environment throughout its lifecycle during production, use, and disposal.

PVC’s Lethal Legacy causes severe health problems, including cancer, immune system damage, and hormone disruption.

22950 KGs of PVC!!

According to several news articles, almost 14000 cards are sold daily.

Each smart card weighs around 4.5 grams, and each day, 14000 cards are sold,

16000*4.5 = 63000grams = 73 kilograms.

by doing some simple calculations, we get that 72 kgs of PVC smart cards are sold daily. This means 22995 kilograms of PVC cards every year, a massive number.

A report said that even in Covid-19 when people avoided stepping out of their homes, more than 8500 cards were sold each day just after the metro services resumed.

Behavioral change over time, we all witnessed.

Whenever I step out of home, the first thing I make sure of is that I have my phone and charger with me, all the other things are secondary these days, and every possible problem I may encounter throughout the day can be dealt with by my phone. I can’t imagine myself stepping out for a day without my phone; if I do so, everything will become ten times hard for me, from booking a cab to paying the cab driver, soon I will start experiencing “moments of realization,” I may even doubt my existence; having my mobile with me eases 90 percent of our daily tasks. The change is so noticeable; how I used to do things eight years ago is entirely different from how I do those things now. For example, only within one month, the 10-minute grocery delivery service was the new normal for me; whenever the service gets down, it makes me realize my new habit and behavioral change.

This new behavioral change is making us replace more and more things with our handy little devices; carrying anything extra is a hassle now.

The inconvenience of carrying the smart card is one of many problems with it.

Commonly, people forget their smart cards at home, leaving them no option but to stand in long queues to buy a new card or a token, but mobile is something people don’t usually forget.

The idea of carrying an extra item to make travel-specific payments has yet to make sense.

To achieve contactless ticketing, some stations have introduced a QR code-based ticketing system, including the airport express line.

What’s wrong with the QR ticketing system?

QR code-based ticketing starts with generating a QR on the phone for the journey, the user generates the code through an app, and after the QR is generated for the trip, the user uses it by showing it to the AFC gates.

So where’s the problem?

Adopting the QR ticketing system requires installing new AFC gates across the metro network, which comes with a massive cost considering the Delhi metro is running at a loss. Installing them would be financially viable only if there is certainty that people are adopting this method.

Is adopting QR ticketing a good idea?

QR ticketing sounds excellent. After all, it does not directly harm the environment, but if we see the process of generating the ticket is a hassle.
The user has to generate a QR code on the phone and scan it on the AFC machine, making it a multi-step process. Hence, it consumes a lot of time and effort.
Also, the complex process may trouble the user.
Scanning the code also requires more engagement compared to tapping the smart card.

What needs to be changed?

In the present time, when Mobile phones have taken the place of wristwatches, cameras, alarm clocks, and FM radios, mobile phones are now also being used for step counting, and phones can do many of those things we used to carry a separate device for

What might an ideal solution look like?

An ideal solution should solve the problem of the environment as well as should be fast and easy to use, eliminating the requirement of a separate item to carry. I came up with some ideas, and I have listed them:

The one I currently use

The first idea is straightforward; many commuters use this, so there’s nothing fancy sounding about it, but it still works. The idea is to carry the card inside the back cover of your phone. Yes, as simple as that, but is it a permanent solution? No, it does not solve the problem of the environment, but still, it makes life a little more manageable.

The rebranding of metro

I named this idea “rebranding of the metro” because it sounds more like it. The idea is that the government will sell cool mobile back covers, yes, of course, embedded with the RFID chip and antenna. This sounds nice, plus this can help DMRC to cover up for the losses. This idea is fine; the user will have to turn off NFC on his phone unless he loves constant notification sound. So this idea is fast, easy, economical, and without using PVC, but does everyone use a mobile cover? I do, but I also remove it sometimes.

The real one

The idea is to use it to integrate smart cards with mobile phones.

Solution

The idea is to develop an app that will work in place of smart cards and tokens.
This app will not only help in reducing the use of Metro cards, but it will also be fast and safe; there will be many more features included in the app to make travel easier.
Since the app will work on NFC technology, there will not be any need to install new hardware in the stations making the idea more economical. It will work perfectly with the old traditional AFC machines.

Working of the Ticketing system

First of all, the Delhi metro ticketing system revolves around two components involved during a journey’s entry or exit. One is the active component which is the AFC machine. The second is the passive component, the Metro card or a token. The Passive Smart card must be “powered up” by the active RFID reader(AFC machine) before transmitting data.
Metro card contains an integrated circuit and an antenna along with the plastic card itself, which transmits the data to the AFC gate after getting powered up by the reader. The reader then converts the radio waves to a more usable form of data. Information collected from the cards is then transferred through a communications interface to a host computer system. The data can be stored in a database and analyzed later whenever the passenger makes an exit or uses the smart card in the future.

How will the app work?

As the working of the Delhi metro ticketing system is explained above. The app will also work on the same technology; the only difference is that we will use our mobile phones instead of metro cards.
This app will work on mobile phones with NFC, and 73% of smartphones supported NFC in 2018.

NFC card emulation

This method emerged in 2012 by Doug Yeager and Ted Fifelski.
This enables NFC-enabled devices such as smartphones to act like smart cards, allowing users to perform transactions such as payment or ticketing.
This technology was later used in contactless payment by various tech giant companies like Samsung pay and Android pay.
By using this method, we will be able to use our mobile phones instead of metro cards. Using this app would be very easy; just by a wave or a tap of our mobile on the AFC machine, the user will be able to pass.
Since the phone is an active component, it will also allow the user to check their real-time balance and will also be able to recharge it.

Key Features

There will be three critical features along with many small specifications.

• Users can create a new wallet that will support features like auto-recharge and live balance checking.

What if someone has an existing smart card with a balance in it?

• The app would also provide the feature of making a virtual card on their phone out of the old physical card and using it on their phone.
• Since the mobile phone is an active component, it can top up other cards just by tapping the card on the phone, and hence the requirement for AVM machines will end.
• Users can add money to their wallets or virtual card through Debit/Credit cards, PAYTM, UPI, etc.

Worked on this project three years ago, posting this here now to keep track of things