Shortage of smart cards hits vehicle owners hard

Buying a new vehicle or getting your personal details changed on the registration certificate of your existing vehicle? Keep all the receipts and documents intact till you get the optical card-based registration certificate. And chances are that you will have to wait for not less than a month before you get the registration certificate.

And if you are found driving your vehicle without a valid registration certificate or documents that prove your ownership of your vehicle, the traffic police can even impound it.

According to officials, more than 1,400 new vehicles are registered at 14 zonal offices in the Capital. Almost an equal number of duplicate registration certificates for older vehicles - due to change in ownership, change in residential address, removal of bank hypothecation, due to lost card and endorsement of CNG - are also made at these offices every day.

While the demand is almost 3,000, transport department officials said the supply of cards is not even half of it. Result: The vehicle owners are forced to make rounds of the zonal offices again and polished tiles.

“I recently paid off the bank’s loan on my car and applied for the deletion of hypothecation from the registration certificate. It has been more than a month but I have yet to get the card. Every time I come the transport officials give me a new date,” said Rajeev Gupta, a Vikaspuri resident.

Transport department officials, however, express their helplessness. “We have outsourced this job. It is the company’s responsibility to buy the smart cards and prepare registration certificates. But there is no supply of the cards. We have reported the matter to our seniors,” said the motor licensing officer of a zonal office requesting anonymity.

Delhi transport minister Ramakant Goswami said the company which has been given the contract has been served a notice. “We have served a notice to the company. We will take a strict action if the situation does not improve in the next few days,” Goswami said.

Next year, every Carnegie Mellon student, faculty member, and staff member will receive a new SMART ID card. Those who currently have a sponsored or affiliated ID will not receive a new SMART card, as the technology on the new cards is being used for public transportation access. Currently, such access is marked by a bus icon on the ID card.

The transition to SMART cards comes as a result of a new agreement between the university and Port Authority of Allegheny County (PAT). According to the HUB’s website, “SMART cards contain a computer chip allowing a cardholder to simply “tap” his or her card on the PAT bus (or incline or T) reader in order to gain transportation access.”

The change in Carnegie Mellon’s agreement with Port Authority also resulted in an increase in the transportation fee that students pay — from $110 to $120, according to the HUB’s website.

Other than the change in transportation access, the SMART cards will be used in the same ways that current ID cards are used, including access to a student’s Plaid Ca$h, print quota, and on-campus residence.

The University of Pittsburgh already employs SMART-card technology, and according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, it recently extended its agreement with PAT for another five years.

Carnegie Mellon, Chatham University, and the University of Pittsburgh — the three local universities that pay the PAT for unlimited rides — generate about 600,000 rides per month, about 11 percent of PAT’s total riders, according to the Post-Gazette.

Students received emails asking for submissions for designs for the new ID cards. There has been some controversy among students about the three designs being offered as voting options.

“[The new designs] are not great. There is one that’s okay, but other than that the designs could’ve been better,” said Nathan Oh, a first-year information systems major.

Camilo Estrada, a first-year vocal performance major, agreed. “I feel like we could come up with something better.”

The controversy over the submitted designs offered even led to an online petition on change.org, written by Jordan Wu, an undeclared first-year CFA student.

In the petition, Wu wrote that “after viewing the submissions, I believe that the designs are not the best that CMU has to offer us. It is implausible to me that CMU, with our amazing arts and design schools, could produce designs such as these. Frankly, I would be embarrassed showing any of these designs to anyone as a representation of our school.”