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

[ifotismeni]

sigh. yea, i thought the charliecard system would be too good to be true.

it just boggles the mind how the mbta managed to royally f this thing up. every other major city i've been to has a card system, either swipe or RFID like the charliecard, and they have their hitches but nothing as grossly stupid as the charliecard. especially the way to add value to a charlieticket or card -- when my parents visit they are infuriated by the convoluted way required for them to just buy a "round trip" ticket -- 4 bucks. it's not clear at all how to do it.

before anyone jumps on me saying that the system is still new, etc etc., i was living in paris before, during, and after they implemented a very similar system called the NaviGO. it was a hell of a lot easier to figure out. recharge a monthly or weekly pass at a kios. if you want just to take a quick trip in and out of the city as a tourist, you are asked to input the trip numbers, not try to figure out what fare you owe.

boston, you're my home city, but cmon, we can do a lot better than this.

[an-art-worker.livejournal.com]

no doubt been noted before but isn't "Charlie" in that song a drunk? (is he not a drunk? If he is what's the deal with naming a card system after a drunk? If we are gong for Boston song references, I would have preferred that they name it the "Dirty Water" card ("ah Boston you're ma home")

I too was confounded by the convoluted way to buy a simple round trip pass. It is a case of bad interface design in the machines- to not offer what must be one of the most common needs: to get there and get back.

[an-art-worker.livejournal.com]

ok - I just googled the song - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_MTA_Song
I guess he wasn't a drunk...

I've lived here most of my life and always thought that the song was about some inebriated journey. Go figure. Let me tell you about my "Nights in White Satin" interpretation...

[xxv.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads-up.

[jadelennox]

Still, the song is about people frustrated wit a fare increase,so the timing is ironic.

Vote for walter o'brien!

Hmm.

[everose.livejournal.com]

This explains why, at the beginning of January, I received some very odd treatment from a station agent at the South Station red line station. I was new to the area, sort of, and I had purchased a Charlie ticket in December, and I thought that it was refillable, because I had never been given a Charlie Card and I kind of thought Charlie tickets WERE Charlie cards. Whatever. Anyway, I was trying to refill my stupid ticket at the machine, and this station agent came over to me and asked me what I was trying to do. When I explained, he deliberately acted dense, as if he could not for the life of him understand why anyone could possibly be confused as to the difference between the ticket and the card. I kept trying to tell him that the only thing I wanted in all the world was some kind of object that I could keep in my wallet and refill at will without it disintegrating over time. It took him ten minutes to finally accept my naivete and hand me a damn Charlie card.

So now I understand! He wasn't being an ass; he was being moved by some unseen hand hell bent on convincing Boston residents that THEY were the problem, not the MBTA infrastructure.

Anyhoo...I haven't really had any problems since, but my Porter to Harvard daily commute doesn't demand much of the T system.

I still don't understand why Charlie Tickets even exist when they could just put everything on the card. We put a man on the moon for chrissakes.

Re: Hmm.

[ron_newman]

I'm starting to realize, though only in retrospect, that the T should have made the CharlieTicket and the CharlieCard completely different in apperance and name. Ideally, the slot for the Ticket should have been made narrow enough that the Card would not fit in it.

The T really did have to introduce the Ticket first, because they had to remain compatible with the existing monthly pass system and its swipe-readers until all stations and fareboxes could be converted to Charlie.

I want Charlie Tickets

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why I would want a Charlie Card when I ride the T like five times a year. I don't need another card cluttering up my wallet, I just want to pay per ride.

Re: I want Charlie Tickets

[ron_newman]

If you really only ride it five times a year, maybe you don't want one. It saves you 30 cents per ride and provides automatic transfers to or from the bus.

[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.

To: An Art Worker

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

Your mistake regarding the 'Charlie on the MTA' song being about a drunk is probably because it has become the ultimate Boston drinking song! Heard in bars and Irish pubs all over the city (and even recorded by several recording artists in the 50's and 60's - I believe The Kingston Trio were the ones who made it famous!). Ironically it was an actual campaign song for George O'Brien who was running for a local office at the time, and it is indeed about a fare increase which O'Brien was campaigning against.