Metro Transit fare collection is in the Go-To cards

Metro Transit riders swiped their Go-To cards in near record numbers during February and accounted for more than half of all fares collected on light-rail trains and buses.

The 3.43 million rides paid for using the bright green cards and companion products such as Metropass and cards for high school and college students represented 54.7 percent of all fares collected during the years second month. That was a high-water mark for the agency and continued a trend in which more customers are ditching cash, tokens and paper passes.

As riders increasingly turn to the plastic cards with an electronic chip inside, some passengers wonder if products such as the SuperSaver passes and Stored Value cards will be phased out. Metro Transit says it has no plans to get rid of the paper prepaid fare cards and 31-day passes, even though they accounted for only 7 percent of fares in 2012.

We offer a lot of different options for riders to try to meet needs and frequencies, said Rachel Dungca, a senior project administrator in the revenue collection department. The SuperSaver cards are still popular with customers who are unsure how much they will ride and with social service agencies that help people with transportation needs, she said. SuperSavers will continue to be sold at its transit stores in downtown Minneapolis and St.Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices. Paul, the Commuter Connection and at 70 retail outlets in the metro area.

But Tom Randall, senior manager of revenue operations, said the use of SuperSaver cards will drop even more as Metro Transit steers riders to the Go-To cards.

Metro Transit was one of the first transit agencies in the nation to use cards to collect fares electronically. Validators first appeared on buses and the Hiawatha light rail line in 2007 and expanded to the Northstar line in 2009. When the new Bus Rapid Transit line on Cedar Avenue opens in June, buses will have card readers at both the front and back doors.

In 2012, Go-To card users accounted for 48 percent of all fares collected. Another 28 percent used one-ride tickets and other types of passes, 16 percent paid cash and 1 percent used tokens. Randall attributes the increase in card use to the advantages that come with them. Among them is that riders can add value at any time online or at any of Metro Transits vending machines. It also allows customers to replace lost or stolen cards, or transfer balances from one user to another.A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a bestplasticcard operator in a landmark case.

Card users also help keep buses on time by speeding up boarding, Randall said. Passengers simply swipe their cards across a reader, which calculates the fare and deducts that amount from their card, without having to stop at a fare box. That can help keep a bus on schedule,The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation. especially at stops where lots of people are boarding.

Another advantage, Randall says, is that Go-To cards can be used to pay fares on all modes of transit, whereas paper passes are not accepted on light-rail or commuter trains since they dont have fare boxes to insert the tickets.

Unfortunately, most PCs don't have touch screens C "yet", says Microsoft, which insists that their time is coming. On the premise that Microsoft knows what it's talking about,A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a bestplasticcard operator in a landmark case. one company after another has been introducing new computers, mostly laptops, with built-in touch screens for Windows 8.

Many of these machines have screens that flip, twist, rotate or detach so that you can use them either as laptops or as tablets. The HP Envy x2, Lenovo Yoga, Lenovo Helix, Dell XPS 12, Asus Vivo Tab, Asus Transformer Book and the Acer Iconia W510 all fall into this category.Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices.

The full name of the machine he was describing is the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T, which at 18 syllables sounds as if it were named by the federal government. It's a laptop whose screen detaches, becoming a tablet, when you press a release button and tug. Awkwardly enough, in laptop mode, the detach button covers up the Windows button used to open Windows 8's Start screen. In laptop mode, you have to use the Windows key on the keyboard instead.

Yes, the Samsung weighs less than 1 kilogram, but that's the weight of the detached screen (the tablet) alone. With the keyboard attached, the whole thing weighs 1.6 kilograms. So right off the bat, this machine isn't comparable to the Surface Pro, which weighs less than 1 kilogram for everything.

All of the Smart PC Pro's guts C battery, processor, memory, cameras and so on C are in the screen. They make the top half of the laptop weirdly heavier and thicker than the bottom half, which contains only the keyboard. In other words, in laptop mode, the whole thing is top-heavy.

Some rival detachable-screen laptops are even more top-heavy C the screen portion flops away from you at the slightest touch. Then again, some of the Samsung's competitors also incorporate a second battery in the keyboard base. That helps with both battery life and weight distribution.

When you detach the screen, the tablet in your hands feels off. It's too thick, too heavy, too plasticky; the iPad and the Surface have spoiled us. And it's a wide, thin rectangle that suits movies well but feels ridiculous when turned 90 degrees. You feel as if you're holding a diving board.

The other unattractive aspect of this design is that both halves of the machine are, in effect, the ugly "bottom." Both the underside of the keyboard and the back of the tablet bear the usual painted-on paragraph of FCC notices and logos; the back of the tablet also bears an archipelago of unattractive flaps, vents and stickers. Where were the designers of Samsung's gorgeous, thin, real laptops when this thing was sketched out?