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Special to Seattlest by Tod Bookless
We have discovered the secret to obtaining a youth (or senior) ORCA card so the smallest (or most seasoned) of Seattlests can ride for less.
The ORCA card is, of course, the new, handy way to pay fares for many kinds of transit including the new Link light rail. Like all good Seattle things (e.g., a trendy restaurant, your friend's house, or the Fremont Troll), the youth ORCA card is not that easy to find unless you know where to go already.
Anyone can go online and order an ORCA card and receive it in the mail in a few days--that is, anyone who is age 19 to 64, able-bodied (in King County), and not low income (in Kitsap County). If you are too young or too old or too poor or need to ride the ACCESS bus in King County, then you will need to find your way to your local ORCA Customer Service Office.
In King County, there are only 2 locations--one at 201 South Jackson Street, and one in the bus tunnel at Westlake, and both are only open weekdays during normal business hours. You might be tempted to do without an ORCA card, but you probably will not want to wait in line to buy a ticket every time you ride the light rail, plus the cards do remember your transfers for you, which is very handy.
We made our way to the ticket office underground in the Westlake transit plaza last week. Since the hours are from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. only, Monday through Friday, it might be challenging for parents that work normal business hours. You will either need to present your youth in person to the one (1) transit employee who works the one (1) window for ORCA cards, or else present a birth certificate. This strikes us as an odd system for a town the size of Seattle. [Ed.: but not for Seattle.]
The newly obtained youth card can be linked to the parent's ORCA card, so parents can go online and add money. It is also possible to link your card to your checking account for automatic refilling with cash, but this should be carefully considered.
ORCA cards use RFID chips instead of magnetic strips, so they can be easily hacked and copied by someone standing near you with $8 worth of equipment. New U.S. passports and some credit cards use this same technology. Basically, anyone with an antenna and a laptop could copy the ORCA Card number of anyone who walked passed them (as demonstrated in this story about driving around San Francisco and picking up passport IDs), so caveat emptor.
For the moment, we would just like to see more locations where ORCA cards can be obtained; we'll hope for more secure ORCA cards in the future.
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Back in May, I was able to get myself a youth ORCA card just by going to the Westlake Customer Shop myself and showing school ID. While the clerk grumbled a bit that my ID had only my name and photo, without my address, she took my word for it, and gave me my card.
One issue, though, is that if a "youth" needs to transfer from bus to light rail (not the other way), it is cheaper to use a paper transfer (valid on Link and costing $0.75), than to use ORCA, which will at least double the fare. This is an issue ST and Metro need to address.
This is slightly off-topic, but I submitted the following questions to ORCA a moment ago and hope that others are interested in similar information:
1. After the free ORCA card offer ends, will cash customers be charged more than ORCA card customers on a trip that involves a transfer?
2. Other than repeatedly purchasing new ORCA cards anonymously with cash, how can an ORCA card user travel via public transportation without having all of his uses of public transportation tracked and linked in such a manner that if the ORCA serial number was associated with him (such as would be the case if he was found to be carrying the card by someone who could read the serial number from it), details of all of his public transportation travels would be available to interested parties with access to ORCA data?
More questions submitted:
3. Under what circumstances will the remaining balance on an ORCA card be canceled?
4. Other than the time at which I board a public transportation vehicle and wave my ORCA card near the card reader, under what, if any, circumstances am I required to present my ORCA card -- which seemingly is the link to a record of all my ORCA-paid public transportation use -- to someone, and what law compels me to do so?