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
 

Some highlights:

"A report by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's Policy and Strategic Planning team, which looked at the feasibility of maintaining the free fare program after a three-year pilot project in Boston ended in January, is recommending the state consider making the program year-round, and expanding it across the system."

"But expanding the free fare across the system would come with a big cost for taxpayers, which according to the report ranges from a low of $72 million to upward of $121 million a year."
 
In my opinion this is completely the wrong way to look at free fares. Free fares should be used as an operational tool, not an equity tool. From the routes that I've looked at in the past, the ones which get 2/3 or more of their ridership from Rapid Transit stops are:
  • 16
  • 21*
  • 22
  • 32
  • 34/34E
  • 69*
  • 89*
  • 104 pre-BNRD
  • 109 pre-BNRD
  • 111
  • Inbound SL1 after WTC (Already free, likely for this exact reason)
  • Inbound SL2 after WTC
  • Possibly Inbound SL3 but it's very difficult to tell.
(Routes with an * indicate that there's significant end-to-end ridership which makes it harder to measure with the available data.)

All of these routes should be fare free simply because it speeds up boarding, and most passengers will then immediately go board the subway and pay the $2.40 anyways.
 
TheRatmeister said:
In my opinion this is completely the wrong way to look at free fares. Free fares should be used as an operational tool, not an equity tool.
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I'd agree that operational impacts should be the first consideration when looking at fare collection, but there's nothing wrong with doing an equity analysis.

TheRatmeister said:
All of these routes should be fare free simply because it speeds up boarding, and most passengers will then immediately go board the subway and pay the $2.40 anyways.
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If all of those routes ended up fare-free, you might as well remove fares for all local busses. Otherwise, there are effectively two separate bus networks, one with fares and one without. This is at least a little confusing for riders, and will almost certainly end up with people taking different routes to avoid paying fares.
While going fare free does speed up boarding, it is unclear just how large the impact is. The minimal readily available analysis I've seen shows between a 0.5 and 3.5 seconds saved per rider, which is a huge difference. It is also unclear how big the effect will be once all door boarding starts.

Lastly, I'd like to actually the T's report before making to many conclusions. While the Eagle-Tribune does seem to do decent reporting, I have pretty low expectations for how journalists cover local transportation. It is possible that the report does cover operational impacts in further depth, but they did not make the article for one reason or another.
 
JumboBuc said:
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This section on Page 20 tells you why the MBTA will not do fare free buses system wide:

Cost Savings from Elimination of Contracted Fare Collection Equipment and Enforcement Personnel

The MBTA is contractually obligated to pay for the fare collection systems installation, use and maintenance contract fees (all ongoing) into the 2030's. So they will pay Cubic their contracted fees for every bus in the system, whether the fare collection is used or not.

A fare free bus decision needed to be made BEFORE the Cubic contract was inked.
 
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