Railroad Forums
Diverging Route wrote: The incentive to tap-out is that if you don't, you're charged the max zone fare (i.e. Zone 10) rather than the zone you boarded. This system works very well in Europe.Apparently the incentive to tap out will actually be some sort of perk, e.g. if you tap out 100% of the time in a month, next month's pass is discounted 10%.
deathtopumpkins wrote:For most riders it may not even be necessary to tap out downtown. Assuming that a failure to tap out will result in the highest fare chargeable based on your tap-in, the only station outside of 1A where the fare to the outer terminal is the maximum fare as opposed to the fare to 1A is Hyde Park, so only Hyde Park inbound and intra-1A riders would definitely need to tap out.BandA wrote:]Mass tap-out in the morning at South Station, North Station, Back Bay and perhaps Yawkey and Boston Landing are going to be horrendous.I don't think it'll be that bad. It all depends on how they implement the readers at major stations. If they do end up gating the platforms, it might slow things down a little bit but I don't think it will be too bad, considering the limited doors and platform widths already regulate the rate of people getting off trains. The main time I foresee it being a problem is when you have an inbound unloading and an outbound loading at the same time on adjacent tracks. It's already hard enough to swim upstream down the platform.
jamesinclair wrote:NYC has never accepted bills of any denomination on board buses. I think the MBTA won't have a problem phasing out cash as long as there are enough stores that will reload Charlie cards.
As for the globe article. Entirely phasing out cash is a very bad idea. Boston is a huge tourist destination. Not everyone can be expected to have the "right" technology.
“We have to be able to make sure that people are going to be able to fill [cards] with cash, we just don’t want them to do it on the bus,” Tibbits-Nutt said while speaking with reporters after the meeting.Spoken as someone who has never ridden the bus. There are thousands of bus stops. You cant tell customers theyre out of luck because you dont want to accept dollar bills on board
dm1120 wrote:NYC has never accepted bills of any denomination on board buses. I think the MBTA won't have a problem phasing out cash as long as there are enough stores that will reload Charlie cards.They accept cash via coins. Probably a byproduct of installing the system when the fare was probably 50 cents.
MBTA3247 wrote:The default options for adding value to CharlieCards at FVMs have been changed to multiples of a one-ride fare. And they finally allow 1- and 7-day passes on CharlieCards.Is the software different on the machines at Government Center and Assembly?
MBTA3247 wrote:The default options for adding value to CharlieCards at FVMs have been changed to multiples of a one-ride fare. And they finally allow 1- and 7-day passes on CharlieCards.This is also the case on the Retail Sales Terminals for sales agents. The default options are now $2.10, $4.20, and $21.00. Adds a bit of screen prodding to add $20 which seems to be a popular amount.
