Heads up, Apple product users: if you’ve recently updated your operating system, your Safari browser may no longer be able to run TAPtogo.net‘s secure log in system.
You can still view TAPtogo.net, but when you try to log in to your account, you may encounter this page.
This goes for Safari on both OS and iOS.
While Metro’s TAP team works on this issue, we suggest you download the free Google Chrome browser as a workaround. Our apologies for this inconvenience, and we’ll let you know when you can return to checking your TAP card balances on Safari.
Categories: Transportation News
I echo the sentiment as Robb and all the others.
Metro can literally pluck a web designer and a computer programmer from the streets of LA who’d get the job done in less time and for cheaper price than Xerox!
Metro, this is all I ask from you guys:
1. Make it easy to know how much is in my TAP card. When I log into taptogo.net, the first thing I want to see is how much is in my TAP card. I don’t want to navigate through mazes of buttons and trees of pull downs to know this. I log in. BAM! I see that there’s $20 in my card! Simple as that.
2. Single click of a button that says “reload cash into TAP.” I don’t want to navigate through mazes of buttons and trees of drop down menus to do this. Log in, see the balance on my TAP card, think that’s it’s low, ok click a single button that says “reload” and enter in my credit or debit card number and recharge. Simple as that.
These two are the most used features that anyone using TAP card wants to know and how to do. If so, why do you make it so confusing to do this?
I can reload money into my London’s Oyster Card easier than this. They even have an auto-reload feature so that in the event I go to London and the money in the Oyster Card runs out while I’m using the London Underground, it automatically recharges up the card so I don’t have to worry about reloading it over and over again.
We live in the world where a person can reload a transit card that is used half a world away from the comfort of my own computer in my own home. This isn’t so dauntingly difficult to do.
When LA’s Metro.net (or anyone else) develops web site content, such as TAP Card content, there are syntax rules for this web content that make the web contents viewable with ANY INTERNET BROWSER software, including Apple’s SAFARI Browser! Does LA Metro’s web development team not understand these BASIC concepts for making web content compatible with ANY INTERNET BROWSER, including SAFARI? LA Metro’s support of Apple’s Safari Internet Browser has been less than optimal for some time now. ALL Los Angeles County residents and visitors continue to pour millions of Federal, State and County TAX DOLLARS down the LA Metro public transport system’s black hole, so it is time for LA Metro to FIX the problem(s) with Apple’s Safari on Mac OS X 9 and iOS 7 platforms and be responsible and accountable for maintaining something more than an excuse or a marginal way for Apple Mac OS X and iOS platform users to communicate with LA Metro.net. While I don’t plan to toss my iPhone or other Apple, Inc., products because LA Metro.net cannot FIX the LA Metro.net interface with the Apple platforms and the SAFARI browser software, but I CAN simply STOP riding LA Metro, until LA Metro FIXES the problem(s) with SAFARI, so that “the rest of us” can communicate with LA Metro.net again! The emerging Metro Light Rail systems have been successful rail systems for moving ever increasing numbers of LA Metro transit riders from point “A” to point “B” quickly and efficiently. Why is the LA Metro web development and support team’s struggles with the Apple platforms and SAFARI also a successful endeavor that matches the success of LA Metro’s new and under construction rail systems? Just FIX the technical problem(s) with SAFARI! End of Story!
You don’t notice the same issues with the Expresslanes, another Metro contract with Affiliated Computer Services/Xerox (ACS is the previous subsidiary of Xerox which does all of the transportation business – http://news.xerox.com/news/acs-a-xerox-company-HOT-Lane-with-Electronic-Toll-Collection-for-LA-ExpressLanes). The Expresslanes website is functional, not clunky, and information is readily available. The customer service people are friendly and are open more than 8 am to 5 pm Monday to Friday. It’s just the TAP contract, for whatever reason, that has no standards and keeps people on hold for 20 minutes just to ask a question.
Can I echo the above comments?
This is Los Angeles. There are SO MANY PEOPLE in this city that are experts at user interface design, probably second in number only to Silicon Valley. It’s an embarrassment that taptogo.net is so awful. And it’s even more embarrassing that these issues haven’t even been touched despite YEARS of complaints.
I get that it’s not Metro’s website, but don’t they have ANY power to exert pressure to make obvious, sensible changes?
The year is 2014.
With my Bank of America online bill pay feature, I can check my account balances in real time. When I buy something using my debit card, I already see it being processed when I fire up my app on my smartphone. I can receive paperless bills from the Southern California Gas Company and LADWP. I am able to make payments to these companies on my smartphone. I can take a snapshot of my paychecks with my smartphone and if I do it before 8:00PM, it posts and gets deposited the same day. I can transfer funds to my friends and family who also uses Bank of America instantaneously through swipes of my index finger.
When I buy stuff online through Amazon.com, the navigation is simple and straightforward. There are no confusing clicks or steps to get where I want. I click pay and presto, my products are on my way.
When I buy something at 7-Eleven, all I have to do is tap my Mastercard with PayPass. No change needed. Tap and away I go.
The year is 2014. The world keeps progressing faster and faster. In a few years, cars will be able to drive themselves and people can wear computers through a wearable headup display device. The world would be much more smaller and more portable with computers more powerful than ones that were used to land men on the Moon back in 1969 fit in the size of my pocket. I can view social media websites, comments, and news from all over the world, in multiple languages, and broaden my perspective on many things from the point of my index finger.
Where’s Metro? Still stuck in 1994.
The problem with TAP is that the people who introduced them never had a vision on how it was supposed to be used. They thought of it solely as a plastic version of a monthly pass and nothing more. They were, to put it bluntly, technologically challenged folks.
They didn’t see the over-and-beyond capabilities such as the ability to use them as reloadable debit cards, the possibility of using it as a form of payment outside of transit such as payment for goods and services, and the numerous powerful features that can be utilized such as a variable fare structure. It took years for Metro to add the cash value feature, slow response as usual after years of complaints by the public, with those running TAP having absolutely no idea how TAP was supposed to work.
And you think Metro would’ve figured out how to use TAP by now, but even a few weeks ago, Metro claims TAP is accepted onboard Metrolink which is clearly not the case.
http://thesource.metro.net/2014/03/03/metro-rail-gate-latching-continues-this-week/
“Twelve agencies are currently part of the TAP network including Metro, Metrolink…”
TAP is NOT ACCEPTED onboard Metrolink. You cannot use TAP on Metrolink. Metrolink operates on a distance based fare model and TAP has no tap-in/tap-out capabilities. This again is a shortsighted move by those who implemented TAP because if TAP was supposed to be a core fare card for Southern California, it should’ve come with that capability considering Metrolink was on a variable fare structure.
And the facepalm moment is that all of this weren’t new ideas. All they had to do was go visit and learn from cities all around the world where contactless cards have taken off with huge successes.
Metro’s TAP implementation can be exemplified with this quote from The Simpsons:
Homer: “Kids, there’s three ways to do things: the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!”
Bart: “Isn’t that the wrong way?”
Homer: “Yeah, but faster!”
Replace the word “Max Power” with “LA Metro” and you get the exact same thing!
The next time Metro tries to do technological upgrades like TAP or updating a website, they better ask the public first, because the public knows a lot more about technology, how they work, and their capabilities more than Metro.
I can honestly say that I’ve had better online banking services with my credit union than the tag team by Metro and Xerox.
That’s how sad Metro pulled off TAP. Metro gets billions of dollars from taxpayers, has millions of riders that pays fares into the system, and the billions in federal and state government loans and grants, yet they can’t even pull off something that is easy to use than my local credit union which has less than 200,000 members.
Metro Fail,
Actually, Xerox has plenty of experience in transportation operations. Now, that doesn’t mean they’ve done a good job here (or elsewhere), but it’s false to just call them a copier company unless you know the scope of their varying businesses.
They handle customer service, fare collection, parking meters, toll collection, training, and much more in varying cases and places.
http://services.xerox.com/transportation-solutions/enus.html
The TAP website is in need of a serious overhaul, and I hope more of the work is brought in house, because I do know people at Metro who are smart and capable of better user experience and user interface design than this.
Collin1000,
That’s not really a valid excuse because then the question becomes, what was the person working for Metro smoking when that person thought Xerox would be a good company to work with to handle TAP? The bad decision by Metro, a government agency, is the one at fault to have chosen Xerox in the first place.
Metro would’ve gotten better service by partnering up with Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank, Citibank, Chase, VISA or Mastercard instead. Didn’t anyone at Metro think that if they’re going to deal with people’s money stored on a plastic card, they should go with banks, debit or credit card companies instead? What made them choose a copier company that has no experience or remotely any relationship with operations of reloadable cards with money in them?
@Your government does not work – teeeechnically, the taptogo site isn’t run or maintained by the government. Nobody who works for the government created or runs the site. They contracted out the work to Xerox, known for their ability to produce photocopiers. Websites? Not so much.
I’m more concerned that TAPtogo.net’s “secure” website only scores a “B” rating on the Qualys SSL Labs (www.ssllabs.com) SSL Server Test.
Seriously, though, how does a front-facing service like this get pushed into production without basic acceptance testing? Where’s the oversight?
The TAP website is honestly the most user-unfriendly site I have ever had to deal with. The links are confusing, I have been told that you can add fare to cards online but it takes 24-48 hours to post to your card. The whole site is just unequivocally awful.
It’s 2014. I can renew my car registration on the DMV website faster than I can do anything useful on TAPs website.
Can Metro do something about this and bring the website up to modern day web standards?
C’mon, get real.
Metro said taptogo.net will be fixed by the end of 2013 in the own comments section last June
http://thesource.metro.net/2013/06/18/gates-to-be-latched-at-union-station-subway-entrances-on-wednesday-here-is-the-sources-qa-about-the-turnstiles-and-tap/
Well, 2013 has come and gone we’re almost one quarter of the way into 2014.
What did you all expect from government agencies? They can’t even get Obamacare websites running correctly! A middle school student can create a better webpage in faster time than your government.
This is merely TAP’s way of weeding out people who use inferior browsers. I don’t think TAPtogo shows up in Alta Vista searches anymore either.
Why am I not surprised?
TAP has had problems with running on Safari for years, and they always blame Apple for their own shortcomings.
Quite frankly, their web site is a complete disaster. The fact that it allows you to load value or buy passes on an EXPIRED TAP CARD says a lot about its dysfunction.
That site needs to be completely scrapped and re-designed from the ground up. Absolutely horrid web site. They should be embarrassed that it’s so bad.
Then again, TAP’s customer service isn’t far behind, so I can’t say that I’m surprised.
Also note this is a problem on Safari on iOS devices as well.