A T worker at Porter Square tells what is really going on

[fenway1912.livejournal.com]

My blog received an email this morning from a T worker. It details the many problems that are going on and that concerns of T workers are being ignored at T Headquarters.

Please spread this letter around as every rider in the system should read it and demand answers.

A T worker pleads: Mr. Grabauskas, please come to my station

Comments

[ceo]

The biggest problem, indeed, with the new fare system is the ticket machines. Whoever designed the UI for those things really ought to be beaten with sticks. Likewise the coin acceptors on the bus fareboxes, which you have to feed to coins into one at a time.

Of course, it's likely that this isn't an accident. It's quite clear that the T would really like everyone to be using CharlieCards, and is trying to discourage people from buying one ride at a time, hence the fare discount for CharlieCard users. The gratuitous inconvenience of buying a CharlieTicket or paying cash for a bus ride fits into this as well. I don't know that it's deliberate, but I strongly suspect it.

If it is deliberate, it's completely asinine, even for the T. The T's job is not to dictate how people use the system, it is to understand how people prefer to use the system and make that as effortless as possible. Thus, the ticket machines should let you put in cash or swipe a credit card, then press the "Give me a CharlieTicket" button or the "Put this on my CharlieCard" button. Average transaction time, 5 seconds. And the fareboxes should let you dump in a handful of coins, like the old ones. (They can't let you swipe CharlieTickets like the old ones, because if it's a stored-value ticket it has to write the deduction to it, which requires a second pass over the heads.)

Now, the fact that the new fare gates make fare evasion easier, not harder, is just plain idiocy. The gates also really should swallow tickets once the fares are used up.

Where's my tinfoil hat^h^h^hwallet

[siderea]

If it is deliberate, it's completely asinine, even for the T.

Yeah, but if it's a ploy by Homeland Security to instigate a Bostonian catch-and-release radio tagging program, it's brilliant. Between Fast Lane and Charle Cards, the government gets quite an enormous percentage of the population under location-tracking surveillance, doesn't it?

Mark my words: some nifty new plan -- theft reduction? required licenses? -- for sticking RFID tags on bicycles, some time in the next two years.

[artemii.livejournal.com]

when i was riding a bus a few weeks ago the driver was chatty and told me that it is indeed deliberate - that the T is trying to get literally everybody who uses it to stop paying cash for anything involving it.

i don't know whether one driver's opinion necessarily means anything, but i thought i'd relay it anyway.