Cell phones kill off pre-paid SEPTA parking cards

It’s back to quarters for paying to park at six SEPTA stations.  The transit agency is eliminating pre-paid cards because their magnetic stripes can get wiped out. Six SEPTA parking facilities–Fern Rock, Jenkintown, Ambler, Fort Washington, Warminster and 69th Street–will no longer accept pre-paid cards with magnetic stripes to pay for parking.  SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney says the decade old technology had a major problem.”The cards had been demagnetized by cell phones or other electronic devices, obviously leaving them worthless which is a big inconvenience for our customers,” said Maloney “so for the time being we are going to revert to using coins at those parking lots as we do at 130 other lots around our system.”The problem will be fixed when SEPTA implements a new fare collection system, but the transit agency doesn’t know when that will be.  Maloney says monthly and weekly trailpasses are not vulnerable to getting erased because they use a newer technology.

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