Railroad Fare Collection

While a final decision will be made when tariffs are revised once NPT is ready to go live, the official word from SEPTA is that there is no intention to eliminate monthly and weekly passes, and all plans are to incorporate passes into the new card.

We at DVARP have significant disagreements with SEPTA over this system, but passes aren't one of them. If anything, our efforts are geared at minimizing the inconvenience this is going to be for passholders, who make up more than 60% of RRD ridership.

Matthew Mitchell wrote:While a final decision will be made when tariffs are revised once NPT is ready to go live, the official word from SEPTA is that there is no intention to eliminate monthly and weekly passes, and all plans are to incorporate passes into the new card.

We at DVARP have significant disagreements with SEPTA over this system, but passes aren't one of them. If anything, our efforts are geared at minimizing the inconvenience this is going to be for passholders, who make up more than 60% of RRD ridership.

Thank you.... I can tell a few people to rest easy now.

Silverliner II wrote:Thank you.... I can tell a few people to rest easy now.

Depends. If they ride the train, they shouldn't be resting easy. Even if they have a pass, this new system promises to be much less convenient. You have to swipe the pass and go through a turnstile to get in and out of the Center City stations, swipe the pass at the outlying station or pay a penalty, and for some trips hand over your pass or credit card to the conductor so the zone fare can be deducted.

So rather than resting easy, train riders ought to be waking up their county commissioners and the mayor.

Matthew Mitchell wrote:

Silverliner II wrote:Thank you.... I can tell a few people to rest easy now.

Depends. If they ride the train, they shouldn't be resting easy. Even if they have a pass, this new system promises to be much less convenient. You have to swipe the pass and go through a turnstile to get in and out of the Center City stations, swipe the pass at the outlying station or pay a penalty, and for some trips hand over your pass or credit card to the conductor so the zone fare can be deducted.

So rather than resting easy, train riders ought to be waking up their county commissioners and the mayor.

Oh no, I agree with you on that, as far as the rail riders go. I meant my bus/trolley friends who are current pass users... just the fact that they will still be available and all will be a relief to them.

I don't like the fact that some entrances will be eliminated either, such as the Norris Street staircase at Temple. Under the NPT plan, people who park there will now have to walk back to Berks Street and up the stairs, and then depending on what train the rider is using, walk half way back towards Norris Street to board the train. A little less convenient than at present.

jfrey40535 wrote:I don't like the fact that some entrances will be eliminated either, such as the Norris Street staircase at Temple.

You sure about that, Jon? I thought there were going to be high-level turnstiles there and the South St. entry to University City. Check the architectural diagrams in the egress study.

Yes Matt I am sure. I double checked drawing T-6 for Temple University and the north side of both platforms show rotogates and emergency exits only. The same applies for University City in drawing U-3A.

One of the concerns I had about NPT was the fact that it seems like a virtual fare increase for everyone. A round-trip ticket already costs $12 between zone 3 an CCP. Times that by 30 days and you get $360 for a month- more than double what a monthly TrailPass costs me now. So yes, I'm concerned that as a monthly pass holder, I will not only lose out on transfers to other modes, but will also face one hell of a fare increase.

Does SEPTA have a plan on retaining discounts for monthly and weekly pass holders? How are they going to factor this into NPT?

jfrey40535 wrote:Yes Matt I am sure. I double checked drawing T-6 for Temple University and the north side of both platforms show rotogates and emergency exits only. The same applies for University City in drawing U-3A.

OK, what you think are rotogates (exit only) are in fact two-way (enter and exit).

tgolanos wrote:One of the concerns I had about NPT was the fact that it seems like a virtual fare increase for everyone. A round-trip ticket already costs $12 between zone 3 an CCP. Times that by 30 days and you get $360 for a month- more than double what a monthly TrailPass costs me now. So yes, I'm concerned that as a monthly pass holder, I will not only lose out on transfers to other modes, but will also face one hell of a fare increase.

Does SEPTA have a plan on retaining discounts for monthly and weekly pass holders? How are they going to factor this into NPT?

Again, official word from SEPTA is that there is no plan to eliminate passes.

Don't recall whether it was Joe Casey himself or someone else high up, but the phrase I heard was that there was "no appetite" to eliminate passes. I have no reason to believe any of these people are trying to mislead us.

Now there are some decent arguments for collecting some incremental fare on every ride (one of our directors at DVARP is of this opinion and makes a good case for it), but there are also good public policy reasons to have unlimited-use passes, and the latter reasons are carrying the day at DVARP, at SEPTA, in City government, and everywhere else I'm aware of. To the contrary, I know a number of elected officials would protest vehemently if SEPTA were to try and abolish passes.

One thing though is that none of this is final until the new tariffs are adopted, and none of those decisions will happen until 2013 at the earliest.

From the hardware standpoint, there is no difference between a pass and a per-ride payment. All the hardware does is get a card number and pass it to the back end. For a per-ride payment, the back end debits the rider's SEPTA account if a SEPTA card is being used, initiates a transaction with the bank for a debit or credit card, or checks the validity if a pass is being used; and then signals back to the turnstile or farebox that the payment is accepted.

Note also that there is likely to be a scheduled fare increase (they've been coming every three years or so) coinciding with the introduction of NPT on the transit side. Fares will go up, but the NPT system itself will not be the cause. However, there may well some changes to the fare structure at that time, especially if (as we are recommending), the price of transit transfers is greatly reduced. SEPTA's current transfer fare is inordinately high, and bringing it down to a more reasonable level will require an proportional increase in some other fares.

Matt, ARE YOU SURE about the rotogates at Temple and U City? The drawing calls them "EXIT TURNSTILES". Is that just a typo, or does exit mean something else in SEPTA's dictionary? I've just never heard anyone say they want to exit from the street to a train platform.

jfrey40535 wrote:Matt, ARE YOU SURE about the rotogates at Temple and U City? The drawing calls them "EXIT TURNSTILES". Is that just a typo, or does exit mean something else in SEPTA's dictionary? I've just never heard anyone say they want to exit from the street to a train platform.

Yep. 1--I have it directly from John McGee. 2--they're accounted for in the spreadsheet listing per-station equipment.

Upon further review, there's two versions of the T-6 Temple drawing, both dated 5/25/10. One of them indeed says "exit turnstiles" and the other says "high entry/exit turnstile." The latter is correct.

This may have been asked before, but how will travel between two outlying stations work?

http://www.clippercard.com/ClipperWeb/d ... ltrain.pdf

I wonder if SEPTA is thinking on the lines of Caltrain for the NPT application on the Regional Rails.