SEPTA’s Key system keeps glitching, leaving some riders unable to pay their fares

SEPTA’s fare system experienced an outage Wednesday morning for the 10th time in less than four weeks.

The blackouts have left customers unable to buy a ticket or add funds to their travel wallets at kiosks, ticket offices, and online.

The issue on Wednesday, which started at 7:30 a.m. and was resolved within an hour, is one of 10 similar outages that have occurred since Aug. 12, according to Andrew Busch, a spokesperson for SEPTA.

“We’re still working to identify the root cause,” said Busch, who noted the transit agency is in touch with Conduent, the vendor of the Key system.

While new ticket sales and card reloads were halted, travelers paying with a loaded Key card or tapping to pay with a contactless method haven’t been affected, according Busch.

During these outages, the transit agency has made efforts to notify staff that customers should be allowed to board even if they can’t pay.

“We don’t want anybody to be stuck as a result of this,” said Busch. “We haven’t gotten much feedback from customers saying that they missed a train or weren’t allowed to board.”

Each of the outages started around 7:30 a.m. Some have lasted minutes, and the longest was about two hours on Aug. 12, said Busch.

The agency is trying to track how many fares have gone unpaid because of the outages, but was unable to share the financial impact as of Thursday afternoon.

The issue is taking place as the transit agency faces a $240 million operating deficit. SEPTA depends on fare revenue to operate, and has been cutting costs internally by restricting some employee travel and pausing some hiring.

SEPTA is looking to increase fares for some riders, which will take effect Dec. 1 if approved. The agency also recently announced that parking fees at Regional Rail stations will be restored and increased.

Unrelated to the recent outages, SEPTA has been planning to create the next iteration of the Key system. One of the desired features of the new system is the ability to easily adapt to new payment methods as they are developed, according to Busch. SEPTA collected proposals from potential contractors to build the system last year.

Conduent was brought on by SEPTA in 2011 to design and build the Key card system for $129.5 million, and although the program was originally intended to launch in 2014 it was delayed for two years. Once operational, the system experienced some issues, and ultimately became more costly. In 2021, SEPTA approved an additional payment of about $29.5 million to the vendor for two years of operational and customer support, boosting the cost of the program at that time to $238 million.

“The current Key system itself first rolled out in 2016. That was a big leap at the time, going from paper tickets, tokens and paper transfers to the system that we have now,” said Busch. “This will be taking us up through what will probably be the next couple generations of fare payment.”