The Sesame Ring helps make riding public transportation easier and more fun, by providing access with a wave of the hand.
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When it comes to transport fuelled by oil, petrol, diesel or what have you, the most environmentally friendly way to go about it is public transport. For a long time I was reliant on trains as my mode of transport and found it frustrating to no end trying to remember my weekly pass, or scrambling on a Monday to buy a new pass before the train left.
Thanks to some clever minds over at MIT and an already successful kick-starter campaign being eco-friendly just got a little easier. They’ve developed a 3D-printed ring that replaces your old fiddly bus or train pass.
Meet the sesame ring, a truly fashionable and practical alternative to cards and other forms of passes. For $17 this will replace your Charlie card, Boston’s smart card for its transit system. This little piece of wonderful tech is waterproof and has embedded within it an RFID tag, meaning any machine that can read this format such as Boston’s transit system will let you continue on your way with a simple tap on a fare reader.
It’s innovation like this that brings a bit of fun back into a sector as mundane as public transport, and in a world where technology is more and more integrated into our lives the sesame ring really covers all the bases.
One can choose to have their ring in a choice of colours, and personalise the four letters which appear on the front, so if you have a four letter name such as Emma you’re in luck. Or if you fancy having a funky design rather than letters it’s not a problem.
Here’s a little bit on where they found their inspiration for the sesame ring;
“Having missed the train many times while fishing for our Charlie Cards (smart cards used for public transportation in Massachusetts), we looked for a solution in wearable technology. After months of hard work, we created the 3D-printed Sesame Ring, supported by the MBTA.
Now, you can walk right up to the gantry, use scientifically approved magic, and scoot on through!”
It’s small innovations like this that I believe make a world of difference to the world we live in. A ring like this one may all of a sudden make public transport dare I say it, fashionable!
That’s important, because take a country like Ireland. Public transport is seen here as the poor persons option, something to be feared and hated. Busses are the scourge of roads, thought of as being there only to detriment the business man in his Mercedes behind it.
Mentalities like this are terribly destructive, and while public opinion is improving we still don’t have the infrastructure in place to accommodate for public transport.
Currently I drive to work every day, and not by choice. My current choices for public transport are terrible and not at all feasible both economically and in terms of time. Little innovations like this are what we need to make public transport more appealing and more versatile in more countries. The more people who use the service, the better the service will become, and it is an essential part of making the world a little bit greener. Whilst there not ground breaking, products like the sesame ring help the industry to grow and expand. This is particularly important in countries where public transport isn’t as comprehensive as it should be, or where there’s a social stigma surrounding its use.
Kicking negative perceptions of public transport is imperative to moving to more green forms of transport; if you live in a country with good public transport then I really do honestly envy you!