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Comment by HeavenFox | Hacker News Reader

And you can pay for ALL public transit in the WHOLE COUNTRY with one card. Meanwhile in the U.S. we struggle to do that even in one city - I'm looking at you, New York!

(Yes I have a MetroCard, which already has the worst form factor among all transit cards in the world, and why I can't pay for LIRR, Metro-North or NJ Transit with it is beyond me)

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At least NYC is finally fixing that with Omny. Full rollout won't be for a few years but it'll support the entire regional transit system like Clipper in the Bay Area does.

https://omny.info/

It’s also worth noting that it will support standard NFC payments, so you don’t even need a separate card; standard contactless cards or mobile pay will do.

Not just travel, with that one card you can use the bike storage facilities, rent a bike, get a cab, rent a car, pay for parking and get access to lounges.

Why not simply accept contact-less payment from mobile phones via something like NFC? And use the stupid metro-only cards as a backup? Speaking from a US perspective...

That would make the most sense but you'd probably have to set up your own payment network as the major ones charge 30 cents per transaction which makes it uneconomical for small fares.

If a lot of metro's already use their own contactless systems, I don't see why they couldn't release an app that does the same thing.

Go figure, the MTA in NYC is doing just that:

https://new.mta.info/system_modernization/omny

For what it's worth, the standard travelcard in Denmark also supports this (Rejsekort).

You can also travel to Malmö in Sweden using it.

And you can check in and out in exactly one machine in one station, Malmö C. But not at any of the other stations that might be convenient like Hyllie or especially Trianglen.

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