Getting a CharlieCard in Davis Square

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

Thanks to the T's new CharlieCard distribution policy, there's now a hand-written sign in the Davis T station booth saying CharlieCards are not available.

But they *are* available at Tedeschi's upstairs. http://www.mbta.com/fares_and_passes/sales_locations/?loc=Somerville says 7 am to 7 pm Mon-Sat. Since Tedeschi's is actually open 6 am to midnight 7 days, is that a mistake?

Comments

[squirrelitude]

Speaking of which, why are they making the cards so hard to get? I thought they *wanted* people to use them.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

They were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on cards that were getting used just once.

So they created a whole bureaucratic procedure for maintaining a very limited inventory at a subset of stations. They're each allowed to give out something like 10 cards per day.

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

I figured they want people to use the paper cards because rides cost more that way... they're making more money when you can't use/get a card....

[squirrelitude]

I had figured that the higher cost of paper cards was to account for the higher maintenance cost of the machinery needed to process them. (Moving parts.)

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

I suppose we could give them the benefit of the doubt.... :)

[littlecitynames.livejournal.com]

They should have just started charging $20 for the cards, and preloading $20 onto them. That would keep people from using them only a few times.

[aedifica]

Yeah, or even just $5 would probably be enough to make people value them more.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

That would be nice. But one of the major purposes of the Charlie system was to eliminate human handling of cash. And the machines can't dispense cards.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I'm not seeing anything in your first link which indicates what, if anything, is new about the distribution policy.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

See item 3: Where do I get a CharlieCard?

These are the only stations that give them out. You used to be able to get them at any station (until they started running out). I guess this policy isn't so new any more -- it's from October.

[ron_newman]

The right answer to this is to charge a small fee for a card, maybe $5, so that people treat them as having some value even when empty. But that would require a way to vend the cards in stations, which doesn't exist now.

[magid.livejournal.com]

It might also help if they didn't make them expire as quickly as they do now; I have a number of expired Cards that still work in the physical sense, but the T wants nothing more to do with them.

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

same.... i've been told to go to south station or downtown crossing and have them transfer the old value off of them onto an active card, since i have money scattered on 5-6 different expired cards right now... haven't had a chance to yet