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MBTA might actually soon roll out, finally, its new, nearly $1-billion fare system
By adamg on Sat, 02/03/2024 - 11:58am
HorizonMass updates us on the new system, which will let you buy passage with your phone but which has some possible issues.
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Comments
operated, on a technical level, by a private equity group
What could go wrong?
The worst?
I'll have to update my Flipper software.
I see this as a technical challenge.
Since rule of law in this nation is nearly done for just grab what you can and cheat to win.
The Use of Phones
Had better not be the only way to pay a fare... there are a lot folks that are in the area that DON'T own a smartphone and have no plans to do so.
Fail successfully?
If this goes badly enough, maybe it'll be what finally slaps the taste of fares out of the state's mouth and we finally get publicly-funded transit.
This is great. Soon we'll have...
...all these new ways of paying for something that doesn't work right a lot of the time, and it only cost a billion dollars.
Out of all the things broken about the T, the fare system wasn't one of them. And so they fixed that instead. Brilliant.
This billion dollar boondoggle will do nothing to…
… to get people out of cars, increase ridership and speed up travel times.
Public transportation should be fare free.
This billion dollar
And you know what will? A system that is efficient, on time, and
frequent.
And you know what won't?
Actually, it will
It’s so fast and convenient in other cities to tap your phone and go. No more lines at the Charlie machines, you don’t have to carry a card, tourists will have it easy.
If it works like NYC, when you ride 10 or 12 times, the rest of the week is free. This will be the best fare-collection improvement since the token.
Agreed but he still has a point
Nobody thought about going into town and then said "ugh, I would if it wasn't for the shitty fare system".
The T's problems attracting ridership back is many fold but the fare system was probably near the bottom of the list.
Agree with one exception
I largely agree but the introduction of the fare gates for the commuter rail have been so aggravating I'm sure it's been enough to push some people over to edge and find another way to travel.
It's amazing how much time and money was spent to make things worse for riders.
Those things are ridiculous.
I take every opportunity to thwart them by holding the gates open.
They don’t prevent people from buying a lower fare ticket and riding to a higher fare station.
An outrageous waste of taxpayer dollars.
Keolis paid for those, not taxpayers
Keolis paid for those gates, not taxpayers, based on their own analysis that said they would be worth it in the long term, by "forcing" folks to activate a fare every time, rather than only activating when checked by a conductor.
A bit more to it
As I recall, Keolis has some agreement where they'd get paid a certain percentage of the increased fair collection. They did it to pad their bottom line and it's debatable if the T would is better off. Riders sure aren't.
The joke is Keolis agreed to install the gates before the pandemic and probably won't see as much money from the deal given the lasting drop in ridership.
About that ridership drop
According to Sam from Wendover, and more reputable sources, the part of the T Keolis runs has rebounded much better than other MBTA modes.
The part of the T Keolis runs
The part of the T Keolis runs brings people to the city from the suburbs, which is famously where many people moved during the pandemic. Lots of people simply left the area served by buses and rapid transit, but they will be replaced eventually and core ridership will fully rebound. It's unlikely Keolis itself has anything to do with it.
Not really.
Not really.
They were paid for by money that was supposed to be a penalty payment from Keolis to the T for poor service.
Keolis doesn't benefit from collecting more fares. The T does.
This project did NOT come along with any reduction of staffing per train. So despite the expensive technology spending, they still have the same inefficient staffing practices that make the commuter rail uneconomical to operate even on a terrible infrequent schedule.
And it was entirely the T's decision to approve these stupid gates.
There are far too many stories of people getting trapped trying to exit despite having a valid ticket. Or all the gates failing, and instead of opening them, the sole employee makes everyone line up for a visual inspection.
The T says they did a lot of work to plan the layout at North Station:
"Observing and analyzing riders' behaviors and pre-pandemic movements through stations
Consultations with mobility specialists
Modeling exercises that led us to maximize functionality"
But I dare you to role-play as a tourist coming in from the subway trying to find the nearest ticket machine. They're allll the way around the back of the gates on the Track 10 (west) side of the station, with absolutely no signage pointing you there. The former ticket machines in the obvious place in the center of the waiting room were removed as part of the TD Garden renovation.
I have definitely thought
I have definitely thought about taking the bus for an errand instead of my car when going someplace where parking was shitty - only to realize I didn't have any money on my charliecard and no cash and you can't reload your card except at the station and I'm not going to drive to the station to reload my card to take the bus the rest of the way and then I drive and never end up reloading the card until I find a few dollars in cash to reload on boarding.
That's probably a me problem but taking the bus is already towing the line of incredibly inconvenient and uncomfortable so it takes very little for other options to start looking more attractive.
People WILL say "eff this, I
People WILL say "eff this, I'm taking an Uber, or driving, or giving up and skipping the trip" because of the NEW fare system. Especially if they're boarding at a bus stop with no ticket machine (remember, no more cash on board), or they don't have a smart phone, or they don't want to pay the fee to buy the new smart card (multiplied by the number of people in their group), or they don't want to (or don't understand how to) futz with installing an app or registering an account.
And a T employee won't be able to give you a break and let you in if you're stuck, because at any point on your ride, you could get interrogated by a ticket inspector who will write you a ticket if you don't have a valid fare.
It actually is an obstacle for non-regular riders
If you can't figure out how to pay, you are much less likely to hop on a bus or train. And believe it or not, how to pay isn't particularly obvious if you aren't already hooked in to using the system.
Oh good. Now I can just wave my phone at
the subway car that CATCHES ON FIRE BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T SPEND JACK ON MAINTENANCE FOR A BILLION YEARS.
In your world it looks like …
… mobile phones grow on trees.
For others, they become a hidden fare increase.
Relevance?
The new system will allow tap credit cards and continue to use Charlie Cards too.
You won't need a phone to use this, so there's no "hidden fare increase" because phones aren't required.
If you want the benefits that are being touted …
… by the commenter I was responding to, you have to pay for your own smart phone. Thus an added expense.
Across the board fare increases will undoubtedly be coming next after this outrageous expenditure on fare machines. They always do.
Utter bullocks
Name one single thing that comment mentioned that can't be done with the Charlie Cards people use now, which they'll still be able to use under the new system? Adding new options doesn't subtract from the existing options. You sound like one of those people who think bikes add to traffic, all the while ignoring that each bike represents one less car.
Read the comment again.
Slowly.
I haven’t time to spell it out for you especially after seeing how clueless you are about me and bikes. Not that I expect you to follow my posts but that you would make such a ludicrous assumption shows me I’d be wasting my time trying to explain even the simplest thing to you.
Have you ridden commuter rail lately?
Most people use their phones because the paper ticketing system and fare machines are a ridiculous chore.
Of course we still need systems for people without smart phones, but let's be honest about how that number is dropping regularly as landlines have been more expensive for decades.
I ride it often.
The fare gates at North Station sometimes take longer to read a smart phone. Plus you’ve got to pull your phone out and find your ticket.
For those reasons and because of occasional battery issues, I prefer the paper tickets. Buy a bunch and spend less time on the phone.
Getting stuck behind someone having these issues at a gate is a pain.
I have never been able to get
weekend pass paper tickets to work in the North Station fare gates.
That can't be just me.
We don't just need systems
We don't just need systems for people without smart phones, which includes people who carry a flip phone to make calls, rather than a more expensive pocket computer that can incidentally be used as a telephone.
The system also has to be usable by people whose phones have run out of charge. Right now, a dead phone battery means I can't use an app to know when (whether) the trolley is coming, but it doesn't stop me from riding the trolley.
Again...for those in the back
The entire system is not dependent on your phone.
There will still be the ability to use a debit/credit card and a CharlieCard.
Additionally, you could also just risk riding the bus/train with your dead phone and not get noticed by fare officials and feel bad for a little while (or take a warning/citation).
I once went to Switzerland (where this same type of system was instituted decades ago). I bought a 2-day system pass the day before and rode out on the equivalent of their commuter rail to a village outside Zurich (where my paternal namesake came from). I toured the village and then went to get on the bus loop back to the train station and realized my 2-day pass had just elapsed. I looked everywhere for an ATM to get a new ticket to ride back in (my credit card didn't work in their fare system at the time...a whole other story) but it was Sunday and a very small village, so the only ATM was at the post office which was closed. So, I got on the bus and spoke extremely broken German with a few pages of a translation dictionary a friend had ripped out and given to me about how I had no money and the bus driver wanted nothing to do with me and just told me to sit down. I got on the train and pulled my hat low and rode back into Zurich. A fare official came through the car but fortunately didn't ask for my pass and I made it without being noticed. I would have paid the fine (once I got back to Zurich) if I'd been found out (or hopefully talked my way out of it as a "stupid American" who doesn't understand transit passes).
These systems work great. And, yes, sometimes people like me (or you with your dead phone) will skirt the system and get away with it. But in the end, the idea is to have as much compliance as is reasonably possible, keep people as honest as possible and punish the repeat offenders until it makes much more sense for them to pay the fare, and eventually realize the whole thing might even work fine if parts of it are free.
In fact, in Switzerland now, if you book a hotel stay (or talk to the tourist office), you can get a "guest card" on all of the regional transit system that let's you ride for a number of days for free. So, I wouldn't have run afoul of my problem like I did 20+ years ago.
https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-us/planning/about-switzerland/eight-tip...
"Stupid American" here
Yup, the stupid American act can be an option.
We were catching a train in France this summer and desperately tried to work the fare machines to get two tickets. Failing miserably under a time crunch, the train arrived and we boarded, planning to use the stupid American act if needed. Even though there was some official-looking person right next to us, nobody was ever asked for tix.
Anyways, a billion dollars for a fare system? Wow.
Imagine if the T …
…. spent that billion dollars on improving infrastructure instead?
I’ve lived in and ….
… spent time in countries that used the ticket controller system. I saw that it really wasn’t that effective for various reasons.
The funniest was in Sicily the one time there I actually saw bus controllers. I watched two of them hop on the front of the bus, timidly ask the three elderly passengers seated in the pensioner’s seats for fare verification, glance furtively at the other more robust passengers and quickly hop back of the bus.
Then again....
In Vienna. Austria, after the doors closed, some official announced himself, held up his ID, and went around checking fares.
Yes, it's random, you don't catch everybody, but it keeps people on their toes.
I ride it several times a week.
At Back Bay station, some days there's a woman shouting at everyone to activate their tickets, which causes a jam up at the top of the escalator. I have a commuter pass and no need to activate anything but she yells in my face regardless as I try to show her my pass.
There's also conductor on the Needham line who has refused to take cash and told people they need to download the app...which good luck getting enough of wifi signal to do that anywhere between Back Bay and Forest Hills.
NYC's system impressed me
As someone who had only ever ridden the T or some local busses when it comes to public transit, I was thoroughly impressed when I was in NYC a few months ago and could just tap my phone to the turnstile and go. And then the train was just... there. On time. And it didn't get stuck in a tunnel on the way to the next station. I didn't realize public transit could be smooth.
The full implementation still
The full implementation still looks like it is a long way's off. The first phase seems to be to install Cubic NFC readers (that work with phones and credit cards) onto existing faregates at stations and next to existing fareboxes at the front door of buses and all doors of Green Line cars. The Green Line will probably go cashless and have people tapping at all doors long before they take the fareboxes out of the buses (especially because the new GLX stations really don't work well with any other system and the new Type 10s on order won't even have front doors where a farebox is now placed on the existing cars). The full contract is supposed to also include all new Cubic faregates, new Cubic fare vending machines, and Cubic readers at the rear doors of buses (not just the front). That part of the contract seems to be nowhere near completion.
Of all the things that don't
Of all the things that don't work with the T, fare collection never struck me as an issue that needed a $1billion upgrade.
“Fare engagement official" (FEO?) as the T calls it -people dispatched in the trains and buses to "engage" people who haven't paid the fare- sounds like one exciting job. Bless the heart of the fare engagement official working the evening shift in the Andrew Square area.
Fields Corner
There are other stations where fare jumping is normal. My observation is that approximately 10-20 percent of all people entering Fields Corner station don't pay a fare. There are almost always people hovering near the fare gates to piggyback on people who pay.
So with this new system what will the FEO do when they encounter a fare evader on the train or the platform? How will they deal with the threat of violence or someone who just ignores them? The fare evasion has been the norm for so long that it's going to take more than some young person with a red jacket and good intentions to stop it.
Gross
Disgusting investment. A BILLION DOLLARS. And what will it cost annually for upkeep of this new system? All the stations around the city, these collection machines will break nonstop. And what are they paying these Fair Engagement Officers? Add it all up, and what's the difference in money made on fair collection? Eliminate all of it and stop profiting on the backs of the poor. FREE THE T
I live along the East Boston
I live along the East Boston waterfront. When I am entering Maverick Station in the morning the students hold the gate open for me even though I have a monthly pass.
Public transportation fares are ridiculous and it's taking us *far* too long to figure that out.
What do people think would happen? That urban dwellers would just start going places willy nilly?
Well, that's why
the Red Line doesn't extend out to Lexington :-(
Those Willy Nilly randy boyz
Those Willy Nilly randy boyz looking for trouble again. Not in this town. Starring Gary Busey as The Mayor, pictured holding a baseball bat which represents law and order and common sense vigilante justice.
It's interesting and a little
It's interesting and a little depressing to see the "we'd not pay taxes for something we don't use" attitude so prevalent here.
Everyone pays taxes for things they don't use directly, a *society* is about doing what's best for all, not just you.
Something did have to be done about the buses
The fare machines on the buses are terrible. They're fine for Charlie Cards, but if you need to pay cash or find out that your card is short, you have to fumble with the machine, get it to accept your bills (which often takes several tries if it works at all), then go through a non intuitive sequence to have the machine register the payment and then collect your current fare. Meanwhile there's a big line forming behind you inside and outside the bus. Very often the drivers just wave people through because the time spent hassling with those things seriously delays the bus, especially when it's crowded, and people already on the bus get disgusted with the amount of time they have to wait while someone is struggling with one of those damn fare boxes. I never complain to the driver about the machines or the wait (it's not their fault) but I have often said to the driver that whoever designed those things was incompetent at best and likely someone in management's brother-in-law. They usually agree because they hate the fare machines even more than we do.
Now we are getting a new system. Will it work better than the old one? Will there still be lines because people can't get the fare boxes to work? I am not optimistic.
Personally, I'd rather go back to tokens.
The free bus trials in Boston
The free bus trials in Boston have been wonderful, passengers can enter both doors unimpeded, it's much quicker and the driver is not distracted.
I can certainly believe that.
Just try getting on the 77 (or any other busy line) during rush hour.
The 77 often goes way off schedule. Part of that is because of traffic (especially around Porter Square) but a lot is due to fare machine caused delays.
Same on the Silver Line.
That and blocked bus lanes.
Things would work better too if
there were CharlieCard refill machines at major bus junctions (like Watertown, Arlington, and Waltham Centers, the ones I have used) and other busy stops that aren't near a T station. The card system only works when you have money on the card before you get onto the bus.
The sound of tokens falling…
… through a fare box is so much more pleasing to the ear than electronic beeps.
No fare boxes
The idea here is that you'll pay into the system before reaching your mode of transit and just have to prove you paid after boarding. And that proof of payment will come as a tap of your method of payment (phone, Charlie Card, credit card) onto a reader that fare enforcement employees will occasionally walk around with to keep people honest.
It's how much of Europe operates (and has operated for over 20 years). It works very well and keeps things moving.
Let's hope it works here ...
The people that seem to have the most trouble with the fare machines are Not From Here. Maybe they're used to better methods Over There.
Inspector
Fare enforcement is really the key to making this work. We can barely get T officers on the trains and buses themselves.. let alone having them whip out a device for a customer to verify their payment on?
nah they will try to pawn this on the CSAs that work in the station. Sorry this is outside of their pay grade (what if they get attacked). So in the end.. 'fare enforcement' will be something talked about but seldom done.
Verses when I was in Stockholm a few years ago and rode the train. I was stopped by a young, almost plain clothed inspector who asked me in swedish for my card. I was all startled because I had never had been approached like this before.. especially on a crowded light rail vehicle. She smiled and then said in English "May I please scan your card for validation"... so I gave her my card.
But yeah.. I was startled because this sht doesn't happne here. People don't do this nor want to out of fear what some nutter might do. We see similar attacks all the time. Its why bus drivers don't enforce fare collection.. its not in their pay grade or job description.. and frankly from what I've seen of other patrons on the T, I wouldn't want to either.
Do you remember the old
Do you remember the old fareboxes? You could dump in a handful of coins (or a T token), and it would instantly chug through counting them and beep you in.
Dollar bills didn't work as well. But they did in other cities, where they would accept them instantly.
Jesus effing Christ
That’s a billion dollars that could have gone towards, you know, buying and operating trains and buses. Look at this number… figuring a 10 year lifetime, repair and maintenance costs of, say, 5% of capital value per year, debt service on the billion… look at it in the context of the T’s overall budget, and it’s like the locomotive with a 5 foot boiler and a 10 foot whistle: the T becomes a financial transaction outfit that, as a sideline, runs a few buses and trains. I hardly ever ride the T but as a taxpayer I’m more than happy to pick up the cost of running it if we can get rid of the utter waste that is fare collection.
And because the last system was SO BAD
we have to spend a billion dollars to get something that hopefully will be better.
This time, I hope that some of that billion is spent on user testing to find out if the system actually works in the real world of Boston rush hour transit before they implement it.
Yeah
but not that the token system was better. Standing in a long line to get a token from some snarly T employee in a token booth. Or fold up a dollar bill and stuff it into the change return slot of the farebox because the boxes were so old they didn't take dollar bills.
The Charlie Card system was leagues better. The problem was.. the T tried to do it in house & quickly realized that technology goes out of date pretty fast so you're constantly upgrading the thing (or need to). Also didn't help that they had software vendor issues to get upgrades to the system. (I think they went out of business or stopped making fare systems LOL)
This time around the whole thing is outsourced to Cubic Transportation Systems, a company that provides fare collection services to many major transit systems like the CTA (Chicago), NYC Subway, TfL (London). So we're in OK hands this time around. Plus Cubic and its parent, a DoD contractor, have been around for decades so they aren't some fly by night tech startup that will disappear in a few years.
I don't like the idea of outsourcing but as someone who works in tech AND has worked at the T.. let the folks who know how to do this run the thing, run it well.
(I also believe transit should be free but alas.. rather have Cubic than something else)
Not in house
It wasn't very in-house. There was a whole fiasco where there was a bidding process for vendors, Cubic was one of the bidders but lost, and they sued to force the bidding to happen again, and lost again. The winning vendor (Scheidt & Bachmann) was cheaper, I believe, but had also never built a fare system before.
In House
Yeah well considering i interviewed for many of these positions as an IT person and they all were with the MBTA (as a company). Yeah this was partially in house.
Cubic is 100% outsourced. There's a difference here.
subject line is about as crude as one will ever see in print
but the point is well-made. We are spending 2.5 times the FY 2024 budgeted fare collection on a system to collect. The real unspoken reason for fares is not collecting revenue, but reducing the number of "vagrants" and "urban youth" menacing the majority of riders who are simply going where they need to be. Diverting the money to put more Transit police on the platforms would be much more effective than spending a billion on another theoretical solution.
“the T becomes a financial
“the T becomes a financial transaction outfit that, as a sideline, runs a few buses and trains.“
Bingo!
Sounds great
How are you going to pay for it? Because if you think your taxes will increase slightly to cover the costs…..well, I have a bridge to sell you
Do the math
FY22 T fares were $322 million.
FY22 Massachusetts general fund expenditures were $32 billion.
So at most 1%.
But we'd also be saving the cost of buying, operating, maintaining, and repairing a fare collection system,
So considerably less than a 1% increase in state revenue would be more than enough to get rid of fares on the T
FY22 isn't a good example
Fare revenue was down significantly from historical levels with fewer people using the T to commute; FY19 fare revenue was $672 million. Plus there was $730 million from the Feds in pandemic assistance, and that free money is coming to an end.
The real hole in the MBTA budget is close to a billion dollars a year, so you're talking about increasing the state budget by ~3% to cover the T.
The T tried to adjust service
The T tried to adjust service to match the reduced demand. But politicians complained, so they had to waste the Federal assistance money running levels of service that hardly anyone used. Unsurprisingly, now they're in financial trouble.
Why so expensive?
These systems already exist for transit systems in dozens, maybe hundreds of other cities around the world. Why couldn't the MBTA just buy an existing fare system instead of reinventing the wheel and spending huge money to develop its own system?