Compass Card Rollout

Meet the new method, pretty similar to the old method

Don’t be that person struggling alone at the U-Pass dispenser this fall while your classmates are already together, albeit in misery, at the bus stop. Everyone will laugh at you and I promise we’ll write an editorial about it, and it’ll be hilarious at your expense.

We only hope this article on the new Compass Card rollout will inform you hard enough to keep you out of the headlines.

First, know that the U-Pass program hasn’t changed at all. It’s merely being synthesized electronically with the Compass Card, which has actually been available on all campus bookstores since April 24 without a deposit fee, according to the KPU website. This means no more paper tickets, and no more line-ups in the bookstore. After you get your card, get it registered on Compasscard.ca. There, you’ll be prompted to enter your card details: a 20-digit card number, a three-digit code much like a credit card security code and, if you really want to, a name for your card. This is the website where you’ll actually add money onto your card—they call it “stored value.”

Like how you used to buy paper U-Pass tickets on a monthly basis, you now have to load your Compass Card on a monthly basis with the U-Pass add-on. You can do that from any electronic device at Upassbc.translink.ca. You select your school from the dropbox, login with your student number and password, and voila: you can manage your U-Pass account and link the Compass Card with the add-on. The earliest you can do this is on the 16th of every month. Make a habit of linking your Compass Card sooner rather than later, as it can take up to 48 hours for the link to be processed. TransLink makes you do it every month for the sake of confirming your eligibility and deterring fraudulent use. On that note, in the case that you do “lose” your card, you can actually register another one and transfer the U-Pass add-on onto the new card instead of feeling damned for the rest of the month.

Now comes the fun part. Regardless of which transit method you’re using to sweat with strangers, you gotta tap-in and tap-out at the new fare gates and validators. They’re at the entry and exit points on the SkyTrain, SeaBus and West Coast Express (which you can get U-Pass add-ons for, too.). It’s all quite intuitive. The buses have card readers with the same tap-in-tap-out process. The difference is that the entry-exit points aren’t exclusive to the door positions.

Still, TransLink announced recently that buses would only charge a one-zone fare after Compass is rolled out to all transit users in October—assuming that you’re tapping out. They have plenty of reasons for this. Vancouver Sun reported that, in part, it was to deal with a tap-out function glitch on buses, which apparently delayed the program for two years. Also reported was that it was a move to address concerns that riders could tap out early and avoid fares. So, ultimately, TransLink was like, “…whatever.”

Tell you what. You should probably just avoid that kind of attitude and take heed if you don’t want to read “Hapless student who couldn’t” in the next edition of The Runner.