rcthompson04 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 20, 2019 1:57 pm
The lack of TVMs is one of those things I have never understood for 11 years living in the area.
SEPTA's had a generally hostile attitude towards TVMs ever since their first efforts maybe 35 years ago. The machines looked a bit like large shop cabinets. Some of us called them "BOBs", or Big Orange Boxes. IIRC they only took cash, not that uncommon at the time, but at least you could buy a ticket before boarding. There was significant incentive because the surcharge policy was different then: if you paid on-board it was a flat $2 extra, a penalty that was generally well-publicized by signs at each station.
I don't remember the exact timeline but it seemed that within just a few years the BOBs were failing. SEPTA had trumpeted the "deal" they got by purchasing low-end machines but they turned out to be difficult to maintain, vandal-prone and most importantly, had hard-wired scanners that couldn't be upgraded. When the Treasury Dept. finally decided to replace those old 1920s-era currency designs in 1990 the machines' scanners couldn't be adjusted to recognize the new images. SEPTA tried to kludge a workaround at a few stations by adding change machines that could take the new bills, but (Hello?!) people weren't exactly thrilled having to deal with 5 or 10 bucks worth of coins for their tickets. Within a few more years the BOBs were gone.
Somewhere in that time frame the $2 surcharge was eliminated as well because too many riders were getting P-O'ed over being forced to pay it when the machines were removed. I was commuting from Norristown at the time and saw several very heated arguments including one that nearly ended up in a fist fight. SEPTA apparently decided, wisely, that conductors' safety was more important than the 2 bucks.
HOWEVER ... several years later the surcharge came back but this time cloaked in SEPTA-spin. Some bright bureaucrat at 1234 decided that as part of a fare increase ("adjustment", as they called it) the regular fare would be redefined as a discounted* fare and on-board fares would now have a variable increment that would reduce the amount of change conductors had to make. Finally the terms "surcharge" and "penalty" would be removed from schedules, signage, and even conductors' vocabularies**. (Got that??) Anyway, the level of obfuscation was enough that few people complained this time around.
Where the surcharge-that-isn't-a-surcharge intersects with TVMs is that once SEPTA realized how many riders were paying extra without major objections, it became a de facto fare increase. Given that the surcharge conceivably generates 2-3 million dollars in found money annually, there's essentially no incentive to install TVMs that would make life simpler or cheaper for riders.
* also ungrammatically labelled "advanced" purchase rather than "advance"
** I once challenged a conductor who was trying to spin the extra charge to a new rider who objected. He actually responded "There isn't a surcharge on board, it's just a higher fare". Yes, really.
Requiem for it's/its, your/you're, than/then, less/fewer. They were once such nice words with such different meanings...