Rollout Of Ventra App Delayed Until Fall
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Transit riders will have to get along for a few more months without a Ventra smartphone app.
After promising for months that it would be ready for a late-May release, CTA officials said Thursday that they now expect the release date to be sometime this fall.
CTA spokesperson Tammy Chase said the area's transit agencies are going to bring in between 20 and 30 experienced beta testers from the Smart Chicago Collaborative's Civic User Testing Group to iron out those problems that exist.
"We don't think the user experience is there yet," she said.
Chase did not go into details, saying the app works well, but said the goal is to make it more intuitive and less of a hassle for users. She singled out the function for purchasing a monthly Metra ticket as something that needs a bit of work.
Even with the delay, Chase said Chicago is expected to be the first city to put an app with such a wide range of uses into operation.
"We get to make a first impression once, and we want the Ventra app to make a great first impression on CTA, Metra and Pace customers," said Michael Gwinn, CTA director of fare systems.
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Chase said by the fall release date all of the promised functions should work well, including purchasing fares for CTA, Metra and Pace travel, managing multiple accounts through one app and obtaining real-time arrival and departure information, as well as Metra trip planning.
The professional beta testers will be testing improvements in the app alongside a hand-picked group of 100 transit users as well as employees of all three transit agencies.
The testing group's work will be done free of charge to the financially-struggling agencies.
