ErnieAdams
Active Member
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2011
- Messages
- 280
- Reaction score
- 134
Soon-to-be-expat monthly Bridj user here, feeling compelled to do a topical text dump this morning from a user perspective. I first started using it last winter when it was better by a magnitude than suffering through the Green Line, and often cheaper in the off peak too (prices have since been adjusted up, from $3 off peak to up to $5 during peak). I only signed up for a pass a few months ago, but was really hoping to ride it through this coming winter at least. Very disappointed that they killed off the program. The fact that it's undercutting the price of a LinkPass is insane -- it should probably be priced more like an inner express bus pass for the value it adds, but I assume they thought that a dramatic price hike would be worse for their customers to swallow than simply cutting the program and starting fresh.
That said, the pass system is far from ideal or user friendly, and I get why they're killing it off in its current form. The guaranteed comfortable seat and Wi-Fi are huge, but here are a few things they should be trying to fix. One sentence summary of the long post below: Their app experience has a long way to go for a company billing itself as an innovator and pulling down decent VC money to boot. To be fair, they've had the "beta" tag on the monthly thing this whole time. But in several key respects including fare payment and (oddly enough) technology, their experience is actually inferior to a comparable MBTA experience.
1) A monthly pass buys you an app promo code that you have to type in before you book each of the rides you take every day, morning and night (max of 40 rides per month). The app saves your credit card info, and if you hit the button five pixels lower or just have a brain fart instead of typing in your hopefully memorized, case-sensitive promo code, you end up inadvertently paying for a one-time pass on top of your monthly membership. It's only happened to me once or twice, and they're good about refunding, but the app should just register the user as a monthly pass holder and dispense with other payment methods during the membership period.
2) Instead of saving your home and office locations, the app presents you with a street map and asks you to manually select your departure and arrival points every time you book, before presenting you with a list of possible departure times and locations. It's home to office, office to home 95% of the time for me, but I can't just tell the app that. Even the T's commuter rail app remembers the recent trips you take, but not Bridj.
3) I've also come to find out that if I select the street corner diagonally across from where I live, I get access to twice as much frequency by way of routes that Bridj otherwise thinks are too far away for me to comfortably reach on foot (still less than 15 minutes, though). You'd think that on a given morning you would be able to pull up a system map and find out where Bridj will be leaving/arriving, but no such thing exists. I just have to assume that Bridj knows best when I tell them where I am, but it turns out they don't always know best.
4) Bridj has GPS tracking on its fleet, but it's not as easy as opening the app and seeing where the vehicles are. You don't get access to GPS tracking until after you book your trip. So if a vehicle happens to be running late, you might not find out until after you book. They are starting to include alerts about late buses, but as far as I can tell these are being added manually by Bridj staffers and are far neither comprehensive nor all that reliable. Again, with the T, I can download any of 100 apps to my phone and find out exactly where everything is, even the blessed Green Line at this point.
5) In the press coverage, they've been talking about how the monthly passholders have been causing rush hour runs to fill up, and that's true in my experience on the morning rush. If you don't book by 6:30 a.m. these days, you're not getting on board between 8 and 8:45. But recall above that I said a monthly pass entitles you to 40 rides per month. I and others I know who ride it frequently stay late enough at the office that Bridj doesn't work for us coming home. So monthly passholders often have rides to burn, and there's nothing disincentivizing us from booking an 8:30 a.m. when we leave the house, then an 8:40 a.m. if we stop to get coffee, then an 8:50 a.m. if there's a long line at the Starbucks. I don't have a good answer for this one, except that it's frustrating that their evening runs come to a hard stop by 7:30 p.m. when lots of us are still stuck in the office. A half-hourly or even hourly route scheduled between 8 and 10 p.m. would make a killing.
Anyway, despite all of the above, I'm bummed that I'll be back to a monthly T pass next month, but I'm simply not interested in paying what it would cost to go completely a la carte with both Bridj and the T (easily $150). I'll probably treat myself to an inbound ride once a week or so -- you almost can't put a price on zooming by packed Green Line platforms on a cold/rainy/snowy morning. Then hopefully I'll jump back aboard full time on a reinstated pass program. That's assuming they are actually getting somewhere on the business side and not just burning cash, an impression you can certainly get on their empty shoulder runs. Fingers crossed.
That said, the pass system is far from ideal or user friendly, and I get why they're killing it off in its current form. The guaranteed comfortable seat and Wi-Fi are huge, but here are a few things they should be trying to fix. One sentence summary of the long post below: Their app experience has a long way to go for a company billing itself as an innovator and pulling down decent VC money to boot. To be fair, they've had the "beta" tag on the monthly thing this whole time. But in several key respects including fare payment and (oddly enough) technology, their experience is actually inferior to a comparable MBTA experience.
1) A monthly pass buys you an app promo code that you have to type in before you book each of the rides you take every day, morning and night (max of 40 rides per month). The app saves your credit card info, and if you hit the button five pixels lower or just have a brain fart instead of typing in your hopefully memorized, case-sensitive promo code, you end up inadvertently paying for a one-time pass on top of your monthly membership. It's only happened to me once or twice, and they're good about refunding, but the app should just register the user as a monthly pass holder and dispense with other payment methods during the membership period.
2) Instead of saving your home and office locations, the app presents you with a street map and asks you to manually select your departure and arrival points every time you book, before presenting you with a list of possible departure times and locations. It's home to office, office to home 95% of the time for me, but I can't just tell the app that. Even the T's commuter rail app remembers the recent trips you take, but not Bridj.
3) I've also come to find out that if I select the street corner diagonally across from where I live, I get access to twice as much frequency by way of routes that Bridj otherwise thinks are too far away for me to comfortably reach on foot (still less than 15 minutes, though). You'd think that on a given morning you would be able to pull up a system map and find out where Bridj will be leaving/arriving, but no such thing exists. I just have to assume that Bridj knows best when I tell them where I am, but it turns out they don't always know best.
4) Bridj has GPS tracking on its fleet, but it's not as easy as opening the app and seeing where the vehicles are. You don't get access to GPS tracking until after you book your trip. So if a vehicle happens to be running late, you might not find out until after you book. They are starting to include alerts about late buses, but as far as I can tell these are being added manually by Bridj staffers and are far neither comprehensive nor all that reliable. Again, with the T, I can download any of 100 apps to my phone and find out exactly where everything is, even the blessed Green Line at this point.
5) In the press coverage, they've been talking about how the monthly passholders have been causing rush hour runs to fill up, and that's true in my experience on the morning rush. If you don't book by 6:30 a.m. these days, you're not getting on board between 8 and 8:45. But recall above that I said a monthly pass entitles you to 40 rides per month. I and others I know who ride it frequently stay late enough at the office that Bridj doesn't work for us coming home. So monthly passholders often have rides to burn, and there's nothing disincentivizing us from booking an 8:30 a.m. when we leave the house, then an 8:40 a.m. if we stop to get coffee, then an 8:50 a.m. if there's a long line at the Starbucks. I don't have a good answer for this one, except that it's frustrating that their evening runs come to a hard stop by 7:30 p.m. when lots of us are still stuck in the office. A half-hourly or even hourly route scheduled between 8 and 10 p.m. would make a killing.
Anyway, despite all of the above, I'm bummed that I'll be back to a monthly T pass next month, but I'm simply not interested in paying what it would cost to go completely a la carte with both Bridj and the T (easily $150). I'll probably treat myself to an inbound ride once a week or so -- you almost can't put a price on zooming by packed Green Line platforms on a cold/rainy/snowy morning. Then hopefully I'll jump back aboard full time on a reinstated pass program. That's assuming they are actually getting somewhere on the business side and not just burning cash, an impression you can certainly get on their empty shoulder runs. Fingers crossed.
