ORCA Card
The ORCA card (One Regional Card for All) is a new transit pass that will be used to pay for bus, train, and ferry transit in the Puget sound region. It will unify the fare systems of Sound Transit, King County Metro, Community Transit, Everett Transit, Pierce Transit, Kitsap Transit and the Washington State Ferries.
While the ORCA card will make mass-transit more convenient for riders across the Puget Sound region, the card also introduces a number of privacy concerns with respect to data collection and tracking. Specifically, the system will track the time and location of each use of an ORCA card in the transit network, providing much more detail into individual travel histories of transit users than is currently possible.
The Soctech group ran a seminar during the spring of 2007 discussing social and technical issues surrounding the ORCA card. This website serves as a record of our findings. If you have any questions about our work, please email us.
Please note: We are not affiliated with any transit agency or the ORCA project itself. For general ORCA questions, please contact ORCA customer service.