(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]

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 (I wish I could find news articles, but they're superseded in web searches by articles from 2016-ish about the privatization of the T's money room.)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.