SEPTA NPT card will be "SEPTA Key"?

jamesinclair wrote:Sounds like a fantastic advertisement for Uber

I talked to three separate people who were so frustrated that they were considering Uber for their next visit. If you're with a group - say Dad, Mom, & 2 kids - and have to shell out 5 bucks each in cash, that quickly puts the price into ride-hailing territory, not to mention the lower hassle factor.

ExCon90 wrote:Shows what can happen when policy is made by people who will spend a dollar to collect the last dime but are not tasked with having any concern for the needs and convenience of users, let alone visiting tourists.

Amen.

MACTRAXX wrote:I still think that SEPTA should have retained paper transfers until an alternative QT card that includes a $1 transfer was up and available instead of putting cash
riders into a bit of a bind...Tourists and others not familiar with the system are going to "bear the brunt" of these fare changes implemented this month...

I've been trying to figure out whether the fools at 1234 intentionally decided to make life difficult for "non-ideal" riders, simply didn't realize what a haggis they were creating because no one took a big-picture view, or were under so much pressure due to past delays that they decided to implement whatever subsystems were working regardless of whether the supporting functionality was also in place. My suspicion is that it's probably all of the above.

I just can not see tourists shelling out money for a SEPTA Key knowing full well how inflexible that they are and remembering what tokens once offered which was (in case anyone is reading this topic for the first time) a 50 cent savings per ride in cost for starters. This in essence was a fare increase for cash fare riders...

Absolutely. I was surprised by how many people were uninformed, misinformed, or just not aware of the implications of using cash.

MACTRAXX wrote:Jeff:

...Tourists and others not familiar with the system are going to "bear the brunt" of these fare changes implemented this month...

I just can not see tourists shelling out money for a SEPTA Key knowing full well how inflexible that they are and remembering what tokens once offered which was
(in case anyone is reading this topic for the first time) a 50 cent savings per ride in cost for starters. This in essence was a fare increase for cash fare riders...

MACTRAXX

"Tourists and other people not familiar with the system" (e.g., locals who only occasionally use public transit) were at the very least as confused and frustrated by the "old system," to the extent that it actually repelled locals from Philly's subways, buses, and trolleys (at least tourists were naive enough to try). Station managers who couldn't make change? Token machines that didn't accept credit cards and wouldn't let you select the number of tokens dispensed (God forbid you only have a $20)? Paper transfers that cost a dollar and that you have to ask a human for (again, one that doesn't make change)? Locals without the need for a monthly/weekly pass avoided it out spite.

No exact change? No cash? You're screwed. All inexcusable in the 21st century, especially since many people no longer carry cash, nor should they have to.

I know this is a sentimental bunch (myself included) and that the Key is far from perfect, particularly with regard to deployment on Regional Rail (though judgment may be premature there). However, SEPTA riders can now refill their Key from their computer, cell phone, or at any station, and all without cash; casual riders can purchase a single ride from a machine with a credit card; transfers are charged automatically and without having to carry around some piece of paper or interact with a SEPTA station manager or bus driver who can't make change; and if speculation from earlier in this thread holds true, we won't even need a Key at all eventually, as the system will capture payment from the RFID chips in all modern credit cards.

Are there people who are inconvenienced by lack of tokens and paper transfers? Of course, and I sympathize with them, but that's the price of dispensing with a system stuck in the last century, one so antiquated and absurd that it was nearly impossible for you're average person to pay (i.e., with a credit card).

I find it odd that this thread often seems to reach for the few arcane and peculiar conveniences of the old system rather than discuss the legitimate advantages and disadvantages of the Key. Tokens and transfers are gone for good, we're better off, and it's time for those of us who care to direct constructive criticism at the Key while and if SEPTA is listening.


As for the Uber comparison: if you're shuttling, say, four people around Center City, Uber has always and will always be cheaper and more convenient.

I think my main problem with this system is the Key works relatively well for regular users of the transit, but it does not seem like it's working for regional rail.

The Good:

• Key card units at all transit stations and transportation centers
  
  Ease of use for regular transit riders, I can actually recover my lost pass if need be if its on the key card

The Bad:

• I have to pay 5 dollars for a key card with 4 dollars worth of trips, which still bugs me.
  
  This system is inherently unclear to anyone who hasn't been riding for more than a week straight. Any other mass transit system website has a guide on their fare systems on how much it will cost to go from one place to another or it built into the machines like London underground or MARTA or the Metro...etc.
  
  No Key card units at any outlying regional rail stations, nor any clarifying information about what will happen with the key on regional rail. Where is someone going to buy a one way ticket? Get charged the sucker fare on the train to go to Suburban/30th to get a key card to go back out of the city? I would at least tolerate a TVM at Bryn Mawr and Paoli at the very least, it is easier for me to get a ticket from Amtrak than it is to get a key from SEPTA .
  
  No group pass, makes it annoying that I can't just take a group of 4 people who are here for 2 days with one key card loaded with the needed passes. This has also been a problem for me taking people to games down at the stadiums.

The Ugly:

• No communication what so ever except for a momentary ad blitz right before change happens. I have had absolutely no information about this stupid system other than its coming and poof: validators we don't use, poof new parking units we don't use, and poof turnstiles. These don't have a clear timeline of activation, and I've been proactive asking conductors and station attendants on what will happen next which always has the reply of "I dunno" for the past year.

What I'm concerned about is SEPTA is more on the page of just getting it though and activating it and having a mesh of temporary fixes, but as the old saying goes, "there is nothing more permanent than a temporary fix".

Roman: I think you may be misreading the general point of many of the concerns we're expressing. Despite being a major critic along with MacTraxx, I have no "nostalgia" for tokens etc. any more than the IT professional in me longs for the days of punch cards and DOS batch commands. The issue for many of us is that while the Key offers major conveniences to regular commuters, it takes away core functionality that was available to all riders without regard to where they live or how often they travel while adding new hoops to navigate. SEPTA made numerous pronouncements about how the Key would be a seamless replacement for tokens, but instead its restrictions and just plain "gotchas" belie that claim. Among other things, the inability to share cards and the need to register them to recover the $4.95 purchase cost are unnecessary impediments to the Key's use by people riding in groups and by people who are at the fringes of the economic spectrum. Similarly, eliminating transfers without providing an accessible alternative falls almost entirely on discretionary and low-income riders.

Bluntly put there was no justifiable reason for SEPTA to have taken the path that it did in developing the Key, one that violated major best-practice principles of large systems design including (but not limited to)
- failing to look seriously at other systems' strengths and weaknesses
- trying to do most design work in-house
- insisting on replicating the weakest aspects of the old fare system
- failing to do adequate end-user testing
- rolling out individual features as they became available without considering whether the surrounding infrastructure was also ready, and
- focusing on administrative convenience rather than making things simpler for riders.

The Key could have come close to being a state-of-the-art system, but instead it barely drags SEPTA to the point where many agencies were a decade or more ago.

ChesterValley wrote:What I'm concerned about is SEPTA is more on the page of just getting it though and activating it and having a mesh of temporary fixes, but as the old saying goes, "there is nothing more permanent than a temporary fix".

Without going full geek about system design, that seems to be exactly where the Key's headed. The amount of scrambling to come up with patches for core design omissions makes me fear that the final product will end up like a typical street paving job, with random hunks of bumpy blacktop covering the results of prior "fixes" ... and "fixes to fixes".

I will add in one more point, this is a post from another social media website called reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/philadelphia/c ... halfassed/ Short of it is that the SEPTA ambassadors are bouncing this guy back and forth from Suburban station to Lansdale to get a new key card for zone 4 without him getting a key card. Now you will also notice other people mentioning how bad implementation is. We are not the only ones complaining about this, Regional Rail rollout has been a complete mess from start to finish. SEPTA has decided it's key only from Zone 4, you cant buy a zone 4 pass from the website, nor are zone 4 for September passes available on the Key Website. I had no idea that this was just implemented (I am zone 3) until I was trying to help someone recently.

This is what a user wrote in the thread:

So now I'm literally right now navigating/getting lost in the SEPTA site as I try to determine what to do. It seems like I'm too late to buy a September monthly pass, which sucks. So I went ahead to try and buy an October one. I have to select a zone, which means nothing to me. Their "helpful" map tells me that Exton requires a Zone 4 pass. So I go back to the monthly pass, but it will only let me select from Zones 1-3. I literally can't even figure this shit out. I was just thinking to myself that I'll just walk to a major SEPTA station and ask an employee, but I'm afraid to get misinformation after reading the horror stories in this thread.

I want to emphasis, SEPTA key is good for the Transit division not Regional Rail.

I just want to say I figured out the problem, the system map says they need a zone 4 pass but a zone 4 does not exist on the key system, it is listed as a anywhere Trail pass. However the Key only being sold for zone 4 wasn't announced, they just no longer sell paper Anywhere passes.

Everyone:

I took notice to the Zone 4/Anywhere Pass description...SEPTA should have described better that Zone 4 riders are covered by the Anywhere Legacy Pass.
Anywhere Legacy Passes are still available since not all stations are part of the Early Adopter Program specifically the two in Zone NJ and the Delaware
stations on the Wilmington Line for starters....

I also found the description of the Legacy Passes as "Paper Passes"...All SEPTA Legacy magnetic stripe Passes have been made of plastic since the middle
1990s...What got me is that whoever posted the pass information was not even aware that SEPTA Legacy Passes are Plastic and NOT paper...

Another cash grab that I have noticed is that some riders are paying $3 cash if they have no change for a $2.50 full fare. I noticed this twice on one run
I rode of the #132 bus this afternoon...Fifty cent "tips" are going to add up when cash riders have no change...

I was unaware that the Key will only allow ONE transfer for the $1 fee within two hours(?) of first use. At least with the old paper transfer system one
could pay another dollar for a third vehicle ride if need be...Another good reason to purchase Legacy Passes for anyone who must use three or more
vehicles in a single trip...

MACTRAXX

MACTRAXX wrote:Everyone:

Another cash grab that I have noticed is that some riders are paying $3 cash if they have no change for a $2.50 full fare. I noticed this twice on one run
I rode of the #132 bus this afternoon...Fifty cent "tips" are going to add up when cash riders have no change...

I was on the 104 bus once upon a time, pulled up to a corner in Broomal, about 13 young adults boarded headed to a concert in Camden. Each of them paid cash fare+transfer, we dwelled what seemed at least 5 minutes to process them all. One of them complained that since her smallest denomination was $10 she gave a larger than fifty cent "tip". She didn't seem to realize that 3*$3.50 would be $10.50. If she and a few of her friends had cooperated she wouldn't have had to waste so much money and we wouldn't have had to waste so much time.

MACTRAXX wrote:I was unaware that the Key will only allow ONE transfer for the $1 fee within two hours(?) of first use. At least with the old paper transfer system one
could pay another dollar for a third vehicle ride if need be...Another good reason to purchase Legacy Passes for anyone who must use three or more
vehicles in a single trip...

MACTRAXX

http://www.septa.org/key/faq.html wrote:TRAVEL WALLET/TOKENS
What is a Travel Wallet - is this a new SEPTA fare?
Not exactly a new fare - it's a new, convenient way to travel on Transit at the Token ($2.00) and/or Transfer ($1.00) price. With Key you can put money in the Card Travel Wallet and pay for a ride on bus, trolley, trackless trolley, Broad Street/Market Frankford/Norristown High Speed Lines - whenever you are ready to travel:

a single ride
a single ride and a transfer/re-transfer
You will receive the same discounted fare as a Token and Paper Transfer without the added hassle - all you need to do is tap when you board the first vehicle and tap again when you board the other vehicle(s) for your connecting trip(s). To qualify for the Transfer rate, the connecting trip (s) must begin within 90 minutes of the time you tapped to begin your trip. Remember, only valid transfers get the discount. Otherwise, you'll pay the full discounted fare for the second or third trip.

Patrick Boylan wrote:I got the 37 bus in Essington, transferred to the Broad St subway, then to the 84 bus at Frankford. Once upon a time that would have been 2 transfers. Either they now limit us to only 1 transfer, and I'm too lazy to research, or the 2nd transfer was after a time limit. Somewhere in my webifigation I saw a 'dispute charge' button which let me compose my complaint.
Curiously where the forgot password emails didn't seem to work I got 2 confirm emails on my dispute charge.

Stay tuned to if SEPTA replies favorably to my complaint.

jamesinclair wrote:

amtrakhogger wrote:How long before those outlying point kiosks get vandalized and become unusable? I remember
the rollout of those automated ticket machines in the 1980’s. Many were vandalized and eventually
removed and most of the ticket sales were done on the train.

The River Line has TVMs at every stop and runs through rough areas of Camden and Trenton. Ive never read about it being a problem.

Its not the 80s anymore.

Going by Tacony Station, it seems all 3 kiosks are plated over (2 inbound and 1 outbound) and unusable. I don't see them (Septa) in any hurry to repair or replace the units.

MichaelBug wrote:

MichaelBug wrote:I have decided to throw caution to the wind & become one of the "Early Adopters". So, on Tuesday, 7/24/18, I purchased an August Monthly "Anywhere" TrailPass for my (previously existing, but little used until now) SEPTA Key, from the mobile kiosk (at North Wales on that day). My receipt lists the "product purchased" as "MTrailPassAny". It doesn't list the period of validity (i.e. August 2018).

I'm going to try it for a month, & share any unusual events in this thread.

Knowing SEPTA RRD's habits, I am still somewhat skeptical that I will be able to get through the month without at least one conductor either (a) challenging the validity of my pass (since it's on a Key card); or (b) not bothering to scan it, because he or she doesn't have one of the portable validator devices (which I have yet to see in use on ANY RRD train). I will carry my receipt just in case there are any issues. We shall see.

Now that August is almost finished, my Key experience on Regional Rail has been mostly uneventful (other than 3 or 4 times where conductors either did not have validators, or said that theirs didn't work) I decided to continue with the pilot for September, only with WEEKLY Anywhere Passes that I usually buy (instead of monthly). I was able to add one for the week of 9/3-9/9 at Jefferson Station this AM (Wed. 8/29) - but only after having to first wait in one line at the Section B ticket windows & then being directed to the Section A windows (the side closer to the Convention Center entrance). Fortunately, the line was short at 8:00a. It appears that at this time, there is exactly ONE terminal available for Key card sales/service at the Jefferson Station Section A sales windows; & NONE at the Section B windows. I don't know about Suburban or 30th St (& I did not want to wait in a much longer line to find out). Hopefully, SEPTA will quickly be able to get the Key fare kiosks on the RRD up & running & have ALL sales windows be able to sell Key fares.

I think Suburban and 30th Street currently have one key terminal each at the regional rail ticket window area. As for the automated kiosks they have out and about, I wonder if they're waiting until all of the regional rail fare zones are online for Key usage to get them activated...

http://www.septa.org/key/index.html#fare

Effective October 1st:

Regional Rail: Zone 3 Early adopters rolling out October 1st. You cannot purchase a monthly parking permit and the key. They will be rolling out those mobile kiosks at select stations and dates between 6 and 10 am.

City Transit/NHSL(Route 100): Turnstiles going into effect at 19th, 22nd, Norristown and 69th street stations. Cash and tokens will not be accepted at gate.

Subway and El: Cash and Tokens will no longer be accepted, Key and single trip only

System wide: PA reduced Transit Fare ID card no longer accepted.

So this week, since I'm now back to Weekly Anywhere TrailPasses, I decided to go online & add the pass for the week of 9/10-9/16. To my utter amazement, I was only charged $5.49 (instead of the expected $55.75) on my debit card! The $5.49 price did come up as I completed the purchase. I did call SEPTA Key customer service to let them know what happened. They let me have the pass "product" for the $5.49 price!

ChesterValley wrote:http://www.septa.org/key/index.html#fare

Effective October 1st:

Regional Rail: Zone 3 Early adopters rolling out October 1st. You cannot purchase a monthly parking permit and the key. They will be rolling out those mobile kiosks at select stations and dates between 6 and 10 am.

City Transit/NHSL(Route 100): Turnstiles going into effect at 19th, 22nd, Norristown and 69th street stations. Cash and tokens will not be accepted at gate.

Subway and El: Cash and Tokens will no longer be accepted, Key and single trip only

System wide: PA reduced Transit Fare ID card no longer accepted.

I had always assumed that tokens would continue to be accepted as long as people still had them. Surprised (but then again, not really surprised...it is SEPTA after all) that SEPTA is systematically banning them, especially this early, given that they were still sold as late as July 31st.

I should also clarify, tokens are taken by the key machines to buy Quick Trip's but they are trying their hardest to eradicate them. The token machines still accept them on the validators for the Busses, Trolleys and Route 100. Frankly it's a matter of time before SEPTA rolls out new systems built without tokens.

As I sit in 30th st waiting for my train, I wonder why they’ve installed kiosks past the turnstiles? Do I not understand how this works?