In January, 2003, Blonde Guy started
working on the Fare card system for the New York City subway. The Metro
Card was introduced in 1994, and is implemented on a network of machines.
Blonde Guy is responsible for all OS/2 related aspects of the system.
The new station at the World Trade Center will connect the
Port Authority Trans Hudson trains with the MTA subway system. Blonde
Guy prepared a modified Station Controller to accept PATH fare cards
for this new station.
The New York City Transit Authority wanted to add auditing capability
to the Fare Card system to ensure correct accounting of the fares
collected. Blonde Guy modified the Station Controller software to support
this capability.
The NYCTA has a long list of system deviations, and Blonde Guy is
correcting the deviations that concern OS/2 machines. Some of the
deviations are on the Station Controller, and some on the machine that
encodes the information on the magnetic stripe on the MetroCard.
The fare card for New York is called the MetroCard. Every transaction
made by a MetroCard passes through an OS/2 machine at some point. Cash
transactions pass through a second OS/2 machine which connects the
bill-counting and coin-counting machines to the Area Controller.
The tools used to build the Fare card system are IBM C++ Set v2.01 and
the OS/2 Developer's Toolkit version 2.1. The program is written in C.
Some parts of the system are written in Gpf PM version 2.1.