SEPTA Cross County Pass is a real pain in my ***

I know the pass is more convenient, so I'm not trying to cause any issues, but if money is an issue and you have to pay the $8.50/$9 the the zone one to zone one ticket, wouldn't it be better to buy the via ticket from start location to end location, ie the full trip, I believe that is the same price, that would save you money over the week on the RRD, even 10 via trips is $90 max as opposed to the pass $109 plus the via tickets needed, the bus/subway bit I don't really know much about, but the transpass for that portion might be an option (valid on the RRD on weekends and airport line all the time).

All in all, would it be cheaper to buy a transpass and a bunch of via tickets? Sorry I haven't done the full math as I don't know your exact travel patterns and wouldn't ask for them on a public forum

I think you have been given wrong info there, an intermediate ticket is used for boarding at a station on the branch and going to another station on the same branch, a via ticket the one you need is for boarding on one branch and going via CCP to another branch

thejax wrote:The person I spoke to, who was from dispute resolution apparently

Limited-Clear wrote:I think you have been given wrong info there

uh oh . What department at the main office would have final say on this? Sounds like it's not only the train crews who have different ideas.

For what it's worth, here's what the SEPTA web site says.

http://www.septa.org/fares/pass/cross.html wrote: For weekday travel on Regional Rail trains operating to, from or via Center City Philadelphia, a Cross County pass may be used with the additional payment of a Zone 1 fare.

A single-ride Intermediate Rail ticket may also be purchased for $3.50 (A) or $4.00 (B) and a single-ride Via Center City Ticket is available for $8.50 (A) or $9.00 (B).

thejax wrote:loufah, I personally think every SEPTA employee I with at HQ reads what you just posted and then makes a judgement call.

Well, as with the photo policy, it doesn't matter so much what the people at HQ say; it matters what the people on the ground with whom you interact believe. If there is a guide for train crew on how to handle fare extensions, it needs to explain how to handle the Cross County pass.

MACTRAXX wrote:

loufah wrote:Interesting. Since the Cross-County Pass is "valid for travel in any direction on any regularly scheduled Suburban transit route, or regional rail service, operating outside the City of Philadelphia", I would have bought a via-CCP ticket (http://www.septa.org/fares/ticket/via.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) ($5.50 or $6) to cover the Melrose Park-Darby portion of that regional rail trip. Good to know a single CCP/1 ticket ($4.75 or $6) works, too. The conductor who wanted you to buy two CCP/1 tickets is rare, but in NJ I encountered a small number of train crew who, faced with a multi-leg trip, believe that you need a separate one-way ticket for each leg.

Loufah and Everyone: I just discovered something here with SEPTA's posting of the via CCP fares: They are the OLD TARIFF and do NOT reflect the current via CCP
fare which is a flat fare of $8.50 prepaid and $10 on board regardless of the stations traveled...This is bound to confuse riders and should be pointed out to SEPTA...

MACTRAXX

Everyone: I just discovered another interesting fare anomaly here: As mentioned the Anywhere via CCP ticket is $8.50 prepaid and $9.00 on train - and the Trenton
Zone NJ One Way to CCP is one dollar more expensive on train - $10 compared with $9 prepaid - Under the old tariff both ticket types sold at TRE were $10 on board...
This shows that SEPTA lowered the on-board fare for a Anywhere OW ticket from Trenton by $1 but kept the TRE-CCP on board fare at $10...Interesting...

I thought that there was a flat $10 on board charge for any tickets bought from TRE to or via CCP as there was under the old tariff...

It seems to me that SEPTA is reluctant to charge any kind of substantial penalty fare remembering how $2 was once the extra charge and are not following NJT
or NY's MTA by charging $5 or more extra on board...

In closing I say "Yes-these fares can be confusing at times" but I give SEPTA credit for seeking to simplify fares in advance of the introduction of NPT...

MACTRAXX

kiha40 wrote:Another thing I've seen is ticket window staff sell independence passes to passengers who board trains that arrive in the city before 9:30 or whatever the rule is. I think it's reasonable to assume that if a person is buying a train ticket 8 minutes before the train arrives, that person intends to board that train. Well she sold it to the passenger anyway. Five minutes later, on the train, the conductor won't accept that. Now of course in this case the train crew member is correct, but another septa employee has just sold that person the ticket a few minutes earlier. The employees should be required to have correct knowledge of the fare rules. If a passenger is given incorrect information by a septa employee and he pays for a fare based on that, that passenger should be allowed to ride to his destination.

There is no restriction on when a fare instrument can be SOLD to a person; the Independence Pass restriction only applies to when it can be actually used. In this case, the person buying the pass should not have tried to use it before 9:30am. And that restriction is weekdays only.

MACTRAXX wrote:t seems to me that SEPTA is reluctant to charge any kind of substantial penalty fare remembering how $2 was once the extra charge

The terms for the flat $2 surcharge were very different. It was waived if the station had neither a functioning TVM (remember those??) nor an open ticket office - i.e. if the rider had no way to buy a ticket at that station at the time of boarding. At base, it was a more equitable policy than the current surcharge which is imposed even if there's no option for a rider to buy a ticket in advance (see the Airport Line). AFAIK that policy is unique among US commuter rail operations and punishes riders for SEPTA's deficient sales system.

The $2 surcharge had its own problems though. When a ticket office had an unscheduled closing, a TVM was out of service (did that ever happen, haha?), etc. there was no way for a conductor to confirm a passenger's explanation/excuse for paying on board. The disputes got pretty heated at times and happened often enough that SEPTA dropped the surcharge after a few years, only to resurrect it as "surcharge lite" in its current form. Unfortunately it's all symptomatic of SEPTA's seeming distaste for "non-standard" passengers; i.e. those who aren't pass-holders, travel outside of normal business hours, or won't/can't get to a station when it's open to buy a ticket in advance.

JeffK wrote:

MACTRAXX wrote:t seems to me that SEPTA is reluctant to charge any kind of substantial penalty fare remembering how $2 was once the extra charge

The terms for the flat $2 surcharge were very different. It was waived if the station had neither a functioning TVM (remember those??) nor an open ticket office - i.e. if the rider had no way to buy a ticket at that station at the time of boarding. At base, it was a more equitable policy than the current surcharge which is imposed even if there's no option for a rider to buy a ticket in advance (see the Airport Line). AFAIK that policy is unique among US commuter rail operations and punishes riders for SEPTA's deficient sales system.

The $2 surcharge had its own problems though. When a ticket office had an unscheduled closing, a TVM was out of service (did that ever happen, haha?), etc. there was no way for a conductor to confirm a passenger's explanation/excuse for paying on board. The disputes got pretty heated at times and happened often enough that SEPTA dropped the surcharge after a few years, only to resurrect it as "surcharge lite" in its current form. Unfortunately it's all symptomatic of SEPTA's seeming distaste for "non-standard" passengers; i.e. those who aren't pass-holders, travel outside of normal business hours, or won't/can't get to a station when it's open to buy a ticket in advance.

JK: I remember SEPTA's Autelca 80s vintage TVMs and that SEPTA literally loosely applied the $2 penalty surcharge and remembering how spotty those machines were functioning towards their end
I felt then - as I do now - that SEPTA RRD riders should NOT be penalized in any form if there is no way to purchase a ticket before boarding and that train crews sometimes did give riders the
"benefit of the doubt" at times particularly in the subject of the availability of those TVMs that were actually working properly...

I will mention the LIRR in comparison: All LIRR train crew members that collected fares carried a card showing ticket office hours for all agency stations and as stations were gradually equipped
over time with the majority having at least two TVMs these would be mentioned with the hours that they were available...Some stations have gotten unmanned waiting rooms with automatic
locks that also protected the TVMs when the building was closed - in that case no penalty was charged and in time until the current generation of TVMs at the LIRR began to be installed beginning
in late 2001 which were much more reliable then the machines that they replaced the LIRR kept the penalty charge at $2 until 2003 when it was raised to $3 and in time it has reached $5 or more
and gradually a rule was implemented that train crews have no discretion over on-board fares and the only exception was a small group of "exempt" stations with no machines installed which now
is eleven total stations: Mets-Willets Point (a ticket office is open on game days), Pinelawn,Bellport,Bridgehampton,Amagansett,Montauk and five Greenport line stations from Yaphank east...
Another mention I will add is Penn Station-NY which since it is open continuously (at least one ticket clerk is on duty overnights) and has TVMs that the penalty charge would be ALWAYS applicable...
With the newer machines more were placed in which they were always available out of doors but under cover adding to less discretion for train crews...

I think that a nominal penalty charge could be implemented by SEPTA provided that it was fairly applied to all riders and that train crews would use their own discretion to waive the penalty
if need be upon notification to try to curb fare disputes...some of the current charges have little if any incentive for riders to buy before boarding and they would have to be high enough to
be a deterrent but have recourse if there is a problem beyond anyone's control...

The coming NPT system implementation by SEPTA will be interesting to say the least depending how fares will be applied and collected and that as mentioned gating the CCP stations - especially
30th Street Station - may turn out not to be the answer to SEPTA's RRD revenue collection problems and will create their own set of problems...

MACTRAXX

MACTRAXX - that's a very interesting comparison. If we're not getting too far off topic here, it still makes no sense to me that there hasn't been a bigger outcry from passengers over the current surcharge-that-isn't-a-surcharge. It's designed to make life easier for conductors by eliminating the need to make change using coins but as you noted it also puts an unfair (and 'un-fare') burden on passengers by making them pay for SEPTA's inability / refusal / whatever, to provide adequate sales facilities. It's particularly egregious at those stations that have no ticket office at all, most notably the Airport. I don't fly very often, but every time I've used the Airport Line there's been at least a couple of passengers in the car complaining about being charged extra. It's not at all helped by the illogical party-line response (can any conductor confirm this?) that the extra charge isn't a surcharge, just a different fare, which only serves to p--- people off. About a year ago I had a chance to ask Joe Casey (on a WHYY call-in show) why there wasn't at least a special exemption for Airport riders. He's usually a straight shooter but that time he gave the standard answer, "we want to encourage people to buy tickets in advance". I started to point out that buying in advance was impossible, but they moved to the next caller.

Back in the days of the $2 surcharge, I too remember that a lot of conductors would give riders the benefit of the doubt. Still, there were cases of "I couldn't get a ticket because the line at the window had 10 people in it" and such that fell into a very gray area so it could really be a dilemma for any conductor who did exercise discretion.

The real problems were with the minority of conductors who went by the rules no matter what. I was on a couple of trains were the disputes escalated to the point where one or both parties threatened the other. It was impossible to know how often conflicts like that happened but it must have been serious enough to cause SEPTA to back off after a couple of years. IMO no amount of extra revenue is worth jeopardizing conductors' safety - or passengers' for that matter.

I frequently bought a ticket at Glenside to go to Trenton and sometime ago I recently had to make the same purchase at Jenkintown. My request threw the lady for a loop, she said you surely mean West Trenton, right? A train was about to arrive going all the way to Trenton (via 30th) but she was incredulous about it and said I was the first person ever trying to buy a ticket to Trenton from her, and didn't believe that there was a direct train to Trenton and surely I was going to have to switch at Market East. I said don't worry about it, just take my $9 and give me a ticket to anywhere via CC, and I'll end up in Trenton.

I know that SEPTA eliminating the R numbers was supposed to make people believe they could get anywhere from anywhere. But the concept is not approaching reality except in a few cases, such as Warminster to Airport.