CTA: New Ventra fare reader upgrades won't hit all buses until Tuesday

Ventra software upgrades that speed fare payment processing times and were supposed to be completed last week on the CTA’s entire bus fleet should instead by done by late Tuesday.

The CTA’s Ventra vendor, Cubic Transportation Systems, is “rolling out the software upgrades methodically to measure results gradually and make sure that the fix is working,” CTA spokeswoman Tammy Chase said Monday.

CTA President Forrest Claypool last week gave RTA officials an update on Ventra, but provided data only on the 40 percent of the bus fleet that had the new “software patches” on their on fare readers.

Claypool said the remainder of the fleet would get the updated software last week.

Not only was the installation not completed las week, but on Friday evening, 3 to 4 percent of the bus fleet was hit with “temporary, intermittant interruptions to reader functions,” Chase said.

The software patches speed fare tap processing and prevent the “inadvertant double-charging” that has occured when customers tap readers at two turnstiles because they assume delays at the first turnstile indicates its broken, Chase said.