UBC and TransLink have started rolling out Compass Cards to students in their first phase of implementation.
After several delays, TransLink announced that it would start distributing Compass Cards to groups of student across the Lower Mainland at the beginning of 2015.
In early January, the first batch of Compass Cards was distributed to 900 students in the Affiliated Theological Colleges on campus for February travel.
AMS President Tanner Bokor is assured that the new program is working as planned.
“We are right where we expected to be,” said Bokor. “We haven’t had any reported issues and the system’s been working just fine so we’re actually very happy with what we’ve been hearing both from UBC and from TransLink. We’ll be continuing to grasp with rolling out Compass to the rest of campus over the next couple of months.”
According to Bokor, feedback from the first round of students regarding the convenience of the new Compass Card has been positive so far. TransLink is scheduled to have two more additional waves of distribution as part of its trial period.
"I certainly have heard comments around it’s much easier just to have the one card that you can reload month after month rather than going to the bookstore," said Bokor.
Bokor also confirmed that the new program will be fully implemented within the year, but the specific date for when the Compass Card will be available to all students has not yet been confirmed.
“We suspect that all students will be able to be on the program come next [academic] year,” said Bokor. “We just don’t know what date that will be. It all depends on TransLink’s analysis of the data after this first wave finishes the trial. Definitely within 2015.”