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

HelloBostonHi said:
Also unrelated to the main thread topic but the US never did chip and pin correctly, they seem to have forgotten the pin..? Credit cards (and debit) in the UK both have pins and must be entered for every transaction. In the USA I've never seen a credit card with a pin but they have a chip, and my debit card rarely seems to ask for my pin even though it has one.
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According to the banks, Americans can't handle remembering a pin. I wish Iw as joking.

Really fucked me last month in Europe when my card wouldnt work at the subway machines. And they advertise it as the perfect travel card!
 
jass said:
According to the banks, Americans can't handle remembering a pin. I wish Iw as joking.

Really fucked me last month in Europe when my card wouldnt work at the subway machines. And they advertise it as the perfect travel card!
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A zip code works just as well as a PIN, and plenty of American retailers (e.g., subway machines, gas pumps) use zip code verification.

The odds that someone will fraudulently use your chip-equipped credit card at a retail location and know your zip code but not your PIN are just about zero.
 
HelloBostonHi said:
Also unrelated to the main thread topic but the US never did chip and pin correctly, they seem to have forgotten the pin..? Credit cards (and debit) in the UK both have pins and must be entered for every transaction. In the USA I've never seen a credit card with a pin but they have a chip, and my debit card rarely seems to ask for my pin even though it has one.
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Yes, chip and pin has been (literally) half-assed and only implemented the chip part making it... not that great. Still don't particularly like contact-less RFID cards, and, for a few years, every bank had them, but, they seem to have fallen out of favor/phased out. I just want a pin on any method.

JumboBuc said:
A zip code works just as well as a PIN, and plenty of American retailers (e.g., subway machines, gas pumps) use zip code verification.

The odds that someone will fraudulently use your chip-equipped credit card at a retail location and know your zip code but not your PIN are just about zero.
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Yes (although the rest of the world seems to have no issue with people remembering a pin they make up). I do remember that when living in NYC there was a lawsuit against the MTA due to privacy issues around using postal codes for CC transactions. No idea how it ended up, though.

Either way, signatures are stupid should should go away.
 
bakgwailo said:
Still don't particularly like contact-less RFID cards, and, for a few years, every bank had them, but, they seem to have fallen out of favor/phased out.
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What cards are you using that are phasing them out? They just added the feature to both of my primary cards.

bakgwailo said:
Either way, signatures are stupid should should go away.
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The big 4 eliminated the signature requirement last year.

https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/13/pf/credit-card-signature/index.html
 
bakgwailo said:
Still don't particularly like contact-less RFID cards, and, for a few years, every bank had them, but, they seem to have fallen out of favor/phased out.
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chmeeee said:
What cards are you using that are phasing them out? They just added the feature to both of my primary cards.
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Curious, I have 3 credit cards and none of them have ever offered me a contactless card.
 
Americans typically have 3-4 cards of various types. Elsewhere in the world, it’s more like 1-2 cards. The banks don’t want to tax folks memory capacity to retain that many PINs.
 
RandomWalk said:
Americans typically have 3-4 cards of various types. Elsewhere in the world, it’s more like 1-2 cards. The banks don’t want to tax folks memory capacity to retain that many PINs.
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You rarely need a PIN for a credit card.
 
RandomWalk said:
Americans typically have 3-4 cards of various types. Elsewhere in the world, it’s more like 1-2 cards. The banks don’t want to tax folks memory capacity to retain that many PINs.
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Why not just set the same pin for every card...?
 
HelloBostonHi said:
Something seems to have stalled and the update scheduled for an April FMCB meeting was postponed to May unfortunately.
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I should keep my mouth shut... They announced it's delayed today :(

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/05/03/key-mbta-fare-system-delayed/MLo5h5jRYQROLxyhhPypFP/story.html

The MBTA’s $700 million effort to convert to all-electronic fare collection is behind schedule, a blow to a high-profile project that the agency has cast as a near silver-bullet solution to many of its service problems and pricing limitations.

Officials declined to specify how long it will now take to implement the fare system, originally scheduled for completion in 2021, nor are they saying exactly what has gone wrong. But the delays apparently involve technology issues with the T’s vendor
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The cause of the delay appears to be twofold. There is some sort of technical problem, which MBTA officials have refused to describe in detail; Cubic said it involved a problem with how the system communicates with a mobile network. Poftak stressed the MBTA will not pay the company until it has fully installed the multimillion-dollar system

The MBTA had hinted at a problem in April, when officials said they would install fare gates at some key commuter rail stations by the end of 2020 — even though the new electronic system was scheduled to come online just a few months later.Cubic has said its New York project is on schedule.
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I tried to warn you all. It's SEPTA key all over again. But noooooo Cubic is an expert, nothing will go wrong. Tying key fare policies like all bus boarding to an unnecessary and delay-prone process is insanity.
 
My apologies folks. I mentioned SEPTA so they immediately went ahead and did something even worse.

SEPTA says the ad program, which debuted a few weeks ago at selected stations along the Broad Street and Market Frankford Lines, is only a pilot, with ads implanted on 20 of the agency’s 300 total kiosks. The idea is that the advertisements, which cycle through the touch screen kiosks, will linger for a second or two after you click them to begin your transaction. Spokesperson Andrew Busch says SEPTA’s tried to avoid having the ad-bearing kiosks deployed at high-traffic stops. “We may revisit having that one there,” he says of the ad at the Walnut-Locust station downtown.
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ead more at https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/05/06/septa-kiosk-advertisement/#8LmCbCrdk0lEjwK7.99

https://twitter.com/gumball_eyes/status/1125210539800571909
 
www.bostonglobe.com

MBTA’s new fare system will be years late, and cost a lot more money - The Boston Globe

Officials say the project, once expected to wrap up by 2021, will now take through at least 2024. They also admitted the costs could balloon from around $700 million to closer to a billion.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

Wow. I am so shocked. Wow.

At least the T is finally doing what it could have and should have done years ago: install/equip Charlie readers on the Fairmount Line without waiting for some mythical fairy-tale "AFC 2.0"
 
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London's AFC:
- tap in and tap out*
- accepts fare ticket (slot, retains exhausted tickets), tap card, phone tap or direct debit/credit card taps
- has a daily cap on how much they take on subway (after you pay twice, the third is reduced and after that it is as if you bought a day pass)
- no pass backs. Each passenger needs their own payment media

I really liked it.

*Docklands Light Rail was barrier free (as it had been since its start) which was confusing when entering or leaving the underground/tube system in 2-seat journeys
 
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JumboBuc said:
www.bostonglobe.com

MBTA’s new fare system will be years late, and cost a lot more money - The Boston Globe

Officials say the project, once expected to wrap up by 2021, will now take through at least 2024. They also admitted the costs could balloon from around $700 million to closer to a billion.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

Wow. I am so shocked. Wow.

At least the T is finally doing what it could have and should have done years ago: install/equip Charlie readers on the Fairmount Line without waiting for some mythical fairy-tale "AFC 2.0"
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That link isnt working for me, but heres another one:


This is really odd:

Starting next year, riders on the Fairmount line will be able to tap-in with a Charlie card rather than using the more cumbersome commuter rail payment system. In 2021, Charlie cards will be dispensed by fare vending machines, and the T will remove the surcharge on fares paid via cash or Charlie tickets – both of which will subsequently be phased out.
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I remember being told that Charlie was 250% obsolete and they couldn't make any more cards and we had to move to 2.0 IMMEDIATELY or all hell would break lose.

Turns out, that was all a lie I guess.
 
jass said:
That link isnt working for me, but heres another one:


This is really odd:



I remember being told that Charlie was 250% obsolete and they couldn't make any more cards and we had to move to 2.0 IMMEDIATELY or all hell would break lose.

Turns out, that was all a lie I guess.
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It wasn't a lie. Charlie is obsolete, and phasing the project this way will result in massive costs to rebuild the Charlie system for only two years of use before everything gets replaced. It's massively inefficient. From what I understand, the problem here was that neighborhood politics killed the potential for efficient, wholesale change through endless tinkering and nitpicking.
 
So here's what they said at the presentation. Without any work the current CharlieCard system dies in 2021. It will apparently lose the ability to accept credit/debit card payments among other end of life failures. Simply put, the software is outdated. So the MBTA is approving some $40M+ to the original CharlieCard developers to push that system over to a "AFC 1.5" that will allow it to continue operating through the full rollout of AFC 2.0.

As for the Fairmont line, they're simply stealing the platform validators from surface level green line stops that literally no one uses and putting them there where it makes far more sense.
 
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