Starting next week, a long-awaited Ventra app will allow transit users to use their mobile devices to pay for fares and passes and, in Metra’s case, use them as actual tickets.
While hardly the seamless “universal” fare card that transportation experts have been envisioning for years, the free app represents perhaps the most significant technological step Chicago transit users have seen since the rollout of the Ventra card in 2013.
It also marks the advent of paperless ticketing for Metra’s 150,000 daily riders…Please click here to read Richard Wronski and Jon Hilkevitch’s story in the Tribune.