MBTA Fare System (Charlie, AFC 2.0, Zone, Discounts)

cubbe8 said:
Yes. This will change next year when the new CharlieCards are out. They will work on the new readers.
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With the Governor's hyperventilating about how easy it is - this is a major disappointment. MBTA showing more interest in making it easier for occasional riders rather than regular commuters and, what's worse is that they don't make it very clear to the riding public that does not make it materially better for their most regular customers.
 
Cubic sandbagged the contract. This is the second interim state, after the S&B upgrade for PCI compliance reasons. It’s at least salvaging something from the mess.
 
Have any other bus riders noticed that both payment terminals are at the front of the bus while there are none at the back door? If this is change is supposed to facilitate all door boarding and payment then they’ve really botched it. Every bus I’ve been on so far has this issue.
 
jbray said:
Have any other bus riders noticed that both payment terminals are at the front of the bus while there are none at the back door? If this is change is supposed to facilitate all door boarding and payment then they’ve really botched it. Every bus I’ve been on so far has this issue.
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Luckily it seems like this can be realistically reconfigured if the T wishes to do it. I would assume they understand concerns about fare evasion and are used to the bus driver being at the front to demand payment. Definitely a wait and see situation
 
as02143 said:
With the Governor's hyperventilating about how easy it is - this is a major disappointment. MBTA showing more interest in making it easier for occasional riders rather than regular commuters and, what's worse is that they don't make it very clear to the riding public that does not make it materially better for their most regular customers.
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I've seen it prove its use to regular riders on my morning bus commute a handful of times now. Riders that don't need to go into work everyday and don't have a monthly/weekly have not kept up on their charliecard balance and went to tap with insufficient funds. Without any cash on hand the bus driver has been able to simply tell them to tap a card and they've still paid when before the bus driver would've just waved them on rather than done the "then you can't ride" back and forth.
 
jbray said:
Have any other bus riders noticed that both payment terminals are at the front of the bus while there are none at the back door? If this is change is supposed to facilitate all door boarding and payment then they’ve really botched it. Every bus I’ve been on so far has this issue.
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Having two readers installed at the front isn't uncommon, that way one slow person can't stop boarding. I'd expect additional readers to be installed for the all-door boarding rollout.
 
TheRatmeister said:
Having two readers installed at the front isn't uncommon, that way one slow person can't stop boarding. I'd expect additional readers to be installed for the all-door boarding rollout.
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I guess so but they are around the corner where the foldable seats are so it's not in the view of the driver in the same way and you still can't necessarily get around the first payer. It literally looks like they installed the second reader that was intended for the rear door in the wrong spot. The only logical reason I can guess for this is that they installed them into the buses prior to launch so that they were on each bus on launch day but did not set them up at the rear door so that people wouldn't try to use them prior to launch.
 
So, as far as I can tell, bus to subway transfers are broken and aren’t charging the 70 cent fare difference.
 
Is the transaction on your card posted or its still pending? I've had a couple weird instances where there was $1.70 for the bus and $2.40 for the green line but both were pending. After a few days I saw the $1.70 charge disappear
 
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