At 11:00 am today, the line behind King County Metro's help desk at the Downtown Transit Tunnel was more than 60 people deep. At 11:00 a.m. yesterday, the same number—perhaps even more—of huddled jacket-wearers stood waiting to buy an ORCA card or ask questions about the new pass. (As of this coming Friday, ORCA cards will replace Puget Passes throughout the region, and paper transfers will no longer be valid on Sound Transit and Community Transit trains and buses. Paper transfers will no longer be valid outside the system—e.g. King County Metro—where they were first issued).



Two automated ticket vending machines (TVMs) stand about 20 feet away from the long line of ORCA customers. On two consecutive days, neither TVM had a line.

I approached  customers to ask why they were waiting in the long, slow line, staffed by no more than two Metro employees. “ORCA,” said one, and the others around him nodded in agreement. When I pointed at the nearby, automated card kiosk, everyone started asking questions: "Can you use a credit card to get one?" "Can you purchase monthly passes or just pay as you ride?" "They don't take cash, though, do they?"

The automated ORCA stations (technically: Ticket Vending Machines, or TVMs) take cash, credit, and debit, and they can be loaded with either monthly or e-purse amounts. (They can't dispense reduced-fare passes.) As I explained this, a woman in front of line interrupted to disagree: "You have to get new passes from the counter."

Everyone I talked to seemed confused by the new ORCA system. One man said it was like having a rug pulled out from under him—"All of a sudden, on December 15, I couldn't go get a normal monthly pass anymore." The woman to his left said that when she'd tried to buy business passes for her employees online, she'd had to fill out "over 10 pages of paperwork"; she was also annoyed that the system made it possible to track her employees' riding histories. "I don't need to snoop on them!" she said. "These passes are supposed to be a benefit."

For the heck of it, I walked to the automated ORCA machine and loaded an ORCA card with the minimum of $5, then brought it back to the line to show the people I'd spoken to how easy it was to buy one. As I walked away, I looked back to check; in the minute or so I watched, not a single person left the long help desk line.

It's tempting to chalk the long lines up to force of habit (people like talking to human beings), ignorance (it's not like people weren't told ORCA was coming) or stubbornness (people take a while to get used to new technology).

But the fact is, ORCA is confusing (witness the new six-page fold-out pamphlet explaining how to deal with some notorious glitches with the card, now available on every Link light rail train), and Sound Transit could have done a better job getting people ready for the change. Last week, Sound Transit spokeman Geoff Patrick says, the agency put out a press release encouraging people to use the machines or buy their cards online "because we're worried about the customer service offices being overwhelmed."The trouble is, ordinary people don't read press releases, and most media don't cover them.

Two suggestions that might have reduced the mass confusion: Putting signs everywhere encouraging riders to use the TVMs (which, at Westlake anyway, are out of view of the customer-service desk); or, even more effectively, mailing information throughout the county, the way Sound Transit typically does when a major change is on the way.

People will get used to ORCA. They'll even, assuming the glitches are addressed (24-hour waiting period for online transfers, cards that expire after going unused for 30 days), grow to prefer it to the current system. But for now, while everyone is up in arms about being "forced" onto the new, high-tech system, Sound Transit should be doing everything it can to ease the transition.

Additional reporting by Erica C. Barnett,