SEPTA NPT card will be "SEPTA Key"?

MBM: Interesting trip report - in this instance you used a SEPTA RRD Quick Trip Ticket...
Which RRD Station did you travel to? These QT tickets have a magnetic stripe on the back...
Turnstiles at 30th Street have swipe readers on top - entry is similar to using a NYCT MetroCard...

SEPTA RRD Quick Trip Tickets are only valid from the originating station on the day of purchase...
As example a Quick Trip purchased from a clerk at 30th Street would read:
"Valid Thursday January 25, 2024; Origin: 30th Street Sales Office"
The destination zone, price paid and time of purchase are also listed on the QT Ticket...

On board the RRD train leaving Center City these tickets are punched and collected as legacy tickets were...

On return had you been charged a fare you would have been issued a green paper Regional Rail Quick Trip
ticket as a receipt for your on-board cash fare that again has a magnetic strip on the back that would have
been valid to exit through the 30th Street Station turnstiles swipe readers...In the instance that fares are not
collected on board an Quick Trip EXIT Ticket would have been needed to be purchased from one of the TVMs
(SEPTA titles their TVMs "Fare Kiosks") inside the "paid" area - I believe the weekday CCP Exit Fare is $6.75
($5.25 is the CCP Exit Fare after 7:00 PM weekdays and all day Saturday and Sunday) - again swipe to exit...

You certainly got lucky encountering the right Gate Attendant at 30th Street letting you out without much
question - that person could have just as easily required you to purchase a QT EXIT Ticket to leave the paid
area at 30th Street...This report is an example of the hassle that SEPTA Regional Rail cash fare riders now
have to deal with in the absence of a SEPTA Key Card - in this instance just for a simple one day round trip...

"Every Dime Every Time" is SEPTA' s mission from their bean counters no matter how hard it is to use the
transit system for discretional or occasional riders that have no other choice to pay their fares with cash...
MACTRAXX

What's surprising to me is that there isn't more of a public uproar over this fiasco with the system being so NOT user friendly. If the public kicked up enough of a storm, couldn't they get the local and state politicians to force SEPTA to stop this nonsense and set the system up to be more reasonable to use?

I think that would happen in New York if the MTA tried to implement these kinds of cut-throat tactics with the riders.

lol what fiasco? what "cutthroat" tactics?

are you aware that OMNY has been rolling out for years and still is not a one for one replacement of MetroCard?

I can't speak to what "cut-throat" tactics are involved, but as someone who's followed the Key fiasco - yes, that word - since its inception I can cite just a few examples:

They violated basic principles of system design:

- Rather than learning from other systems' successes and failures, they decided to design the Key in-house. It led to the (in)famous "not invented here" mindset that caused them to reject simpler and possibly less costly alternatives.

- They fixated on a rebuild-in-kind of the legacy fare system, a crazyquilt of differing and sometimes user-hostile practices inherited from SEPTA's multiple predecessors. After they'd committed to that approach they found that a number of those practices couldn't easily be replicated digitally. As a result some revenue sources, notably suburban transit zones, had to be abandoned.

- At the same time they DID eliminate aspects of the legacy system that made it easier for all users, not just Key-holders, to use SEPTA for discretionary travel. While tokens were antique in many ways, they offered functional convenience: whether a rider was a commuter or occasional traveller they could buy tokens for any number of trips greater than 1, making them convenient for anyone simply making a round trip. They could be held for future use, bought in bulk for use by a group, etc. The new system replaced them with "Quick Trip" tickets that have none of that flexibility: they're valid only for a single trip on the day of purchase.

- The new system also restricted transfer privileges to Key holders. Previously anyone making a multi-leg trip, almost a necessity with SEPTA's grid-based route system, could pay a dollar for each subsequent leg. Post-Key, discretionary riders must pay a full fare for every leg of a trip even if transferring is unavoidable.

- The initial product roll-out was a series of avoidable stumbles. Most notably the user interface was a cumbersome mess; it turned out that in order to make deadlines SEPTA had simply put an incomplete developer's front end into general service. There were also cases where partial functionality was released without verifying its integration with other parts of the system.

- Payment on the commuter rail division now requires an annoying "tap on, tap off" procedure that imposes turnstiles at city stations and forces riders exiting at outlying stations to verify payment at unsheltered kiosks.

- Only a handful of outlying commuter rail stations have TVMs. While SEPTA is working on accepting standard e-payments, for years discretionary riders have been unable to purchase tickets before boarding which subjects them to a fare penalty.

- SEPTA opted to add a debit-card feature to the Key. That function's used by only a tiny fraction of all commuters but imposes an expiration date on all cards, requiring everyone to get replacements every three years or so.

- These and other fumbles have caused multiple revisions to the original system. At this point there's been roughly a 100% cost overrun at a time when SEPTA is on the financial edge.

There's no need to repost the same content verbatim a few weeks later. We all read it the first time around.

There are plenty of systems that use a tap on-tap off approach, both in the US and other countries. The only other way to do this is to install turnstiles everywhere, which is expensive and not really practical at many stations.

lensovet wrote:There's no need to repost the same content verbatim a few weeks later. We all read it the first time around.

There are plenty of systems that use a tap on-tap off approach, both in the US and other countries. The only other way to do this is to install turnstiles everywhere, which is expensive and not really practical at many stations.

Well as an occasional SEPTA rider, I have no problem with tapping on and off, though it is a slight inconvenience.

But I have a major problem with SEPTA having no TVM's at most outlying stations and then charging the occasional rider the higher on-board fare even though the passenger is unable to buy a ticket before boarding.

Even New York MTA's much criticized Long Island Railroad doesn't use these kinds of cut-throat tactics.

lensovet wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 8:36 pm There's no need to repost the same content verbatim a few weeks later. We all read it the first time around.

Apologies, but there's no way of knowing who's read past posts.

Head-end View wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 9:41 pm But I have a major problem with SEPTA having no TVM's at most outlying stations and then charging the occasional rider the higher on-board fare even though the passenger is unable to buy a ticket before boarding.

Even New York MTA's much criticized Long Island Railroad doesn't use these kinds of cut-throat tactics.

You can buy Key at retailers too, and it's a one-time issue, even for the occasional rider. Plus the onboard charge is much cheaper than anything LIRR or NJT charges.

Key Tix and contactless is coming to SEPTA RR soon anyway, so this will all be a moot point by next year.

lensovet wrote: You can buy Key at retailers too, and it's a one-time issue, even for the occasional rider. Plus the onboard charge is much cheaper than anything LIRR or NJT charges.

About that, I didn't remember that you could buy them at retailers, especially when there are no retailers along the Paoli local, it's easier for me to get a physical Amtrak ticket than a SEPTA key card. I had my Keycard expire on me a bit ago, I forgot to replace it as I don't use Regional rail as much as I used to. I found that out taking the bus, and then tried to use my card to tap for the bus and it got rejected. Still don't know why, but then I tried to fix my Keycard. The link that SEPTA has is https://www.septakey.org/info/septa-sales-locations, which states:

If your Key Card has expired or if you’ve reported it lost/stolen, visit one of these SEPTA Sales Locations to transfer your funds to a new Key Card.

All those stations are within Center City Proper minus 69th street, and I'm not going to 69th street for a keycard.

So what ended up happening is I ate a cash fare going into Center City and just bought a new Keycard at 30th as the hours I took in were outside of the operating hours and I'm not bothering with transferring funds at this point. Fun thing is the keycards expire every two years, so just make sure to not forget it and be sent around in a circle again, maybe if they just mailed new Keycards I'd be less annoyed.

That and the fare machines suck at dispensing tickets for new riders, every time I'm at 30th for a late night train there is always someone new berating the SEPTA employees about how to get a ticket to some outbound station. Now you can make the argument that stupid people are not going to learn, but what I'm saying is if the point of mass transit is to move everybody having an architecture that's hostile to the non-regular riding public it creates an unneeded burden. I have heard people say they wont take the train into the city because the key tap system is confusing and they get lost looking at the ticket machines.

Again, I understand we should have some baseline competency, but when I took a train in London I just punched in where I needed to go and it asked for the associated fare instead of asking for what dollar amount I was pretty sure it needed.

In either case, somehow Amtrak can handle having a TVM at Paoli and Ardmore, I think SEPTA can handle one at Bryn Mawr and or Paoli. For all its faults at least you can use a credit card on Regional Rail now

SEPTA's retail locator claims that Paoli sells Key cards. Is that not the case?

You do realize that you should register your card online, which would probably both give you a hint on when the card expires and also would allow you to transfer funds without going in person anywhere? Plus you get the money back you paid for it.

If you go look at the retail locators for outbound train stops on regional rail, they are almost all the train station. Those train stations are from Overbrook to Paoli with the exception of I think Bryn Mawr have hours of 5:30 am to 11:15 am M-F. At other stations they are making motions towards shutting down those ticket offices as discussed in this post1637652.html#p1637652 thread Paoli's station is open 5 am to 6:45 pm M-F, My station is not close to that. I'm also not driving out to Norristown, the King of Prussia mall or Chester just for a SEPTA keycard, I'm just going to take the R5 into the city and grumble about the cash fare. If it's the weekend you are SOL for getting a keycard at outbound stations, if you can even catch a train given how infrequently they run these days.

I did forget to register my card because the SEPTA app I had kept force logging out my SEPTA key account every time I used the train which was between months and I got fed up resetting my password multiple times. That glitch went on for months from what I remember.

Again the point we're making is that the system they have designed is fine for regular riders but is hostile to new and infrequent users, I've had this problem explaining to people they have to take the train into the city to then get issued a fare card, granted it is less stupid then when I told people to have cash on hand and quarters for the R5, up until 2020 the railroad was cash only and parking payment would only take quarters. I know some people who only took the train back years ago still think SEPTA works like that.

ChesterValley wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 7:33 pm All those stations are within Center City Proper minus 69th street, and I'm not going to 69th street for a keycard.

... what I'm saying is if the point of mass transit is to move everybody having an architecture that's hostile to the non-regular riding public it creates an unneeded burden. I have heard people say they wont take the train into the city because the key tap system is confusing and they get lost looking at the ticket machines.

And that's what I also was saying in my prior (and apparently too-long) post. I too have heard more than one person say they're going to drive after battling SEPTA's user-hostile spiderweb to make a discretionary trip.

One of the best interface designers I ever worked with had what he called the "elevator model"; i.e. pretty much anyone can get on an elevator anywhere in the world and understand which buttons to push. Sure, most systems can't be that straightforward but it's no reason to lose sight of the goal.

RandallW wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 10:10 am I haven't used SEPTA. I tried once, but when attempting to determine how when I wound up going to Philadelphia on short notice before I arrived, I learned that I would not be able to purchase a fare card (per SEPTA's website) at 30th street and that there wasn't the ability to use my iPhone for a tap-to-pay system, and if I wanted a fare card mailed to me, I would have to apply a minimum of two weeks in advance, I just gave up then and there--it's clear that SEPTA does not believe the city of brotherly love should give any love to its visitors.

Did I read this right? You can't purchase a Key Card at 30th St ??