An article in University Week (the faculty/staff paper for UW) on Thursday noted a number of changes to the Husky ID Cards that identify people who belong on campus. One change is that employees will now have picture IDs (yes, employee ID cards at UDub do not have pictures on them, while student IDs — virtually identical in every other way — do). But that wasn’t the most interesting thing. What was was that ORCA will be in place by autumn 2007.

ORCA will merge all the transit passes for the four main transit systems in Seattle (King County Metro, Pierce Transit, Community Transit, and Sound Transit) into a single card. But that’s not all. Kitsap Transit, Everett Transit, and the state ferry system are also jumping into the fray, meaning that you will only have to use one transit card to go from Issaquah to Port Orchard. Of course, finding a bus/ferry/train combination to do that is a different story.

The biggest change will be that ORCA will be a touchless smart card. While San Francisco and other cities have experimented with “standard” smart cards (ones that have to slide into readers), ORCA is going to rely on a RFID chip to transmit fare information, similar to London’s Oyster card. Of course, RFID chips have a few security problems. At this point, the ORCA people aren’t addressing them, but I figure they will have to at some point.