Friday, June 10, 2011

Octopus Card

I love the Octopus card.  It makes everything easily accessible.  You can pay your transit fares with it or even pay for your meals with it.  It’s basically a card that you can put money in and pay for anything with one convenient touch.  Sounds great right?  Did you know the system/concept was designed/invented by a Canadian?  Ironically, we don’t reap the benefits of our creation at all.

Before I left Toronto, I saw Rogers proudly advertising their great advancement in phone technology.  You can now use the phone underground on the TTC.  Wow, big deal.  Is this seriously your idea of a new technology?  Most countries build their transit systems with the problem of reception in mind and put a receiver inside the tunnel.  I get so frustrated talking about this.  How far behind are we?  I keep complaining when I am taking the TTC, “back in the day, we already had the octopus card in HK, blah blah.”  Ten or so years later, I am still complaining.  In my current trip, I am seeing such a quick growth spurt in the Hong Kong landscape and transit lines.  They have built about five new transit lines in the past five years.  TTC is trying to build one in five years, and we are not sure if they can finish on schedule.


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