(no subject)

[randomness]

My friend Lisa Weber of Better Mass Transit, a public advocacy group here in Boston, has asked me to share her two-question survey about one aspect of the MBTA's new fare collection system.

Here's her post:

"Friends who take the T. They've started switching to their new payment system which eliminates cash payments on board, but will allow you to pay with a smartphone, fare media card, or contactless credit card. You'll still be able to pay cash at fare vending machines to buy the fare media cards before boarding.

"They have announced their plan to charge a $5 mandatory overdraft protection fee for each kind of payment (each new fare card, smartphone app, credit card).

"Would you please take this two-question survey to share your opinion about the required $5 fee. Feel free to share it with anyone who takes the T. I'm happy to answer any questions."

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VMV3BF6

Comments

[bikergeek]

Wait, what? So if you buy a $5 charlie ticket for there-and-back on the subway, you'll get charged $7.50 for it? Fuck that! It's a cash grab, plain and simple. Especially since any credit or debit card will provide a "yes or no" answer at the time of the transaction. It's not like you're taking a check that could bounce.

[intuition_ist]

The whole charlie card / charlie ticket system was a cash grab from the beginning. Can you tell me what a round trip subway only fare is? If you're stuck without your handy charlie card, it will set you back $5.25 -- that's right, you can't get 2 round trips out of $10. Even with the charlie card, it's still $4.50 for a round trip. For the overall level of service, cleanliness, and timeliness, it sucks. They realized about 15 years ago that if they kept tokens for fares, they couldn't just keep raising fares willy-nilly. Hence the charlie card. Every time I take the T these days I feel like a first-class sucker.

[bikergeek]

The T was one of the last transit agencies to replace tokens with fare cards.

One problem with tokens is accounting. Each token in circulation represents an outstanding fare in the "Accounts Payable" column on the T's books, forever. It's like a piece of merchandise which someone has paid for but which you've yet to deliver. Stored value on a CharlieCard, OTOH, expires if you don't use the card for six months, which eliminates the accounting issue.

Another was the MBTA money room scandal that was uncovered in the early 2000s, with widespread theft of cash. (I wish I could find news articles, but they're superseded in web searches by articles from 2016-ish about the privatization of the T's money room.) The T wanted to cut down drastically on the amount of cash that was handled and the number of people who were handling it, and fare cards that could be paid for with debit or credit cards were an effective way of cutting down on cash handling.

So there were good reasons for going over to the fare cards.

But yes, I do agree the T sucks and represents poor value-for-money for the fare payers. It was part of what got me to start bicycling to work.

[randomness]

The stored value on a CharlieCard card doesn't expire. The cards do have an expiration date, but value on an expired card can be transferred to a new card.

[bikergeek]

Interesting. When the Charlie Card was originally introduced, they were talking about the fact that unused tokens that were out-and-about in circulation (and lost, in token collections, rolled under someone's dresser, etc.) with low likelihood of ever being used presented some accounting difficulties, and that making unused fares expire after six months was an accounting win, and that was why fare cards were a win for the T financially.

[randomness]

Well, whatever the story might have been then, policy is that stored value does not expire, and can be transferred to a new card.

Recently they have been a pain about amalgamating balances from multiple cards onto a single card, which they used to do but now won't. We'll see what they do when they change to the new system.

[frotz]

Huh. Is this super-recent? In December I walked into the Downtown Crossing office with "Hi! I've been cleaning up and I've found like eight Charlie Cards, mostly expired. Can you combine them all into one new card for me?" "Sure!" (Cleaning being an iterative process I did it again a week or two later.)

They would not however do it with CharlieTickets, which used to be supported.

[randomness]

E reported about the same time that they would not combine valid cards with balances on them when she asked at the Downtown Crossing office.

Possibly the difference is that some of yours were expired? I don't know.

[frotz]

So weird! (Inconsistent, the mbta?! Sigh.) I have just noticed that the MBTA now explicitly advertises the ability to do this by mail; I don't think this existed before:

https://www.mbta.com/fares/charliecard/services#consolidate

(You must have five or more cards, and they must have been purchased with cash, to be eligible. So odd.)

[randomness]

Don't know why they limit it to five or more, but the cash restriction is so people don't use the MBTA as a way to get cash advances from credit cards.

But yeah, definitely inconsistent.

[randomness]

No. You've got it wrong in two ways.

First, there will be no more CharlieTickets. Second, new CharlieCards will cost $5.

If you want $5 in cash value on a new CharlieCard, it will cost you $10. I'm not sure where you're getting the $7.50 figure from. After you have the card, additional credit will cost what it costs, so there will be no additional charge.

If you want to pay with a contactless credit card, it will cost $5 to register the card.

(Caveat: transit advocates are pushing back against the proposal.)

[bikergeek]

They're still hitting you over the ear for $5, but if it gets you a card that can be reloaded multiple times over a long lifetime, then that's not so bad. IIRC CharlieCards have a lifespan, but it's something really long like 7 years. (I had one expire on me a couple of years ago.)

I thought they were doing this on a per-transaction basis.

Getting your hands on a CharlieCard used to be somewhat hard, particularly if you couldn't make it to one of a handful of stations like Downtown Crossing or Harvard during business hours.

I wish the T would copy one aspect of many European systems: the fact that there are fare vending machines just about everywhere, and that you can reload a fare card at a whole lot of places like convenience stores and such.

[randomness]

So, part of the new system is that they will be rolling out vending machines in many new places. One of my earlier posts includes a link to the T's suggestion page, which has a GIS map on which one can suggest locations for new ticket vending machines.

That post is here:
https://randomness.dreamwidth.org/644384.html

I encourage everyone to make suggestions for vending machine locations. It can't hurt.

Also they plan to sign up many more third-party vendors like convenience stores.

[bikergeek]

I took a look at the map. The existing suggestions for AFC locations in my neighborhood are pretty good. I clicked "Like" on the ones I'd be likely to use.

I do hope the T looks at some of the machines that are in use elsewhere in the world. The MBTA unfortunately suffers from a bad case of "Not Invented Here", and tends to order up expensive custom solutions for things that are solved problems elsewhere. (Like the fare gates that are in current use on the T, which are a custom design.)

[randomness]

Or the fareboxes on buses, which require coins to be dropped in one at a time.

[gingicat]

Survey has been closed.

[randomness]

I'll ask her, thanks!

[randomness]

So the reason was that she and her group went in for a meeting with the MBTA tonight. The MBTA says now that the $5 fee is under consideration and that public opinion changed how they're looking at it.

Which is potentially a good thing!

[minoanmiss]

Here's hoping!

T survey

[cos]

Looks like the survey is already closed?

Re: T survey

[randomness]

Yes! Lisa and her group had a meeting with the MBTA yesterday, and were told that because of public reaction the $5 fee is now under reconsideration.

I'll be posting an update with a pointer to her statement later.