deathtopumpkins wrote:Charlie Cards are now implemented by most of the RTA bus districts in the state, as well as on RIPTA in Rhode Island. Those that haven't migrated over are waiting until the next-gen system, but will have complete commonality on that mode.The EGE wrote:And having everything under one roof encourages passenger-experience-enhancing planning like fare commonality, schedules timed for good connections, shared goals on multimodal projects, etc.But that implies that we actually have any of those things - and we don't.
Fare commonality:
Sure, you can buy commuter rail fares at subway vending machines, but it's not publicized, hardly anyone actually realizes this, and it's not user-friendly since all it offers you is zones - you have to already know which zone your station is in. But there are no transfers offered, and you cannot use a CharlieCard to pay for the commuter rail. Not even as payment media to buy a ticket from a machine.
Despite being separate agencies, Chicago has better fare integration than that!
Schedueld connections:
Has the T ever done that? They can't even do such simple things as have a once-per-hour bus hold 30 seconds for people sprinting up from a subway train. Some of the RTAs might have buses intended for transferring to the commuter rail, but I would be genuinely surprised if there was enough communication (or will) for the T to actually hold a train if that bus is late.
Multimodal projects:
There are only a handful of stations where the CR and rapid transit intersect, and several of them don't even have direct connections already - so this clearly doesn't really matter to the T. Plus, the major transfer stations are already shared with other agencies anyway (e.g. Amtrak), and the T has demonstrated that they can cooperate with the RTAs and Amtrak for station planning, so I don't see that as an impediment.
I'm willing to bet passenger experience wouldn't change at all if you spun the CR off from the T.
In fact if you consider a future with regional train service around the state - Cape Flyer, Knowledge Corridor, Inland Route, state-sponsored trains to Springfield, maybe even on P&W, wouldn't it make more sense for all of these services to be under the same umbrella (MassDOT)?
If commuter rail gets properly folded in on the one-source fare system you will have that same portability statewide and throughout RI. RIDOT intrastate CR just being a mercenary Purple Line service gloms off it, and they definitely didn't go to the trouble of porting RIPTA buses over to be shut out of intermodal portability forever. Knowledge Corridor will be the same way if that service happens. The Conn River Line stays entirely within PVTA's bus district, and two-seat transfers to/from those buses are the linchpin that makes that service have any legs whatsoever as a proposal. The only thing they can't easily do is establish portability with CDOT's Hartford Line fare system, which uses Metro North's and SLE's. But I guess that can be the underlying initiative for Fare System III: the Next-next Generation. The quantum leap forward after this MA/RI statewide initiative would be some sort of universal EZPass-like thing with a translation layer that every state on the eastern seaboard can adapt to their fare collection systems.