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Charlie to be welcomed on MetroWest buses
By adamg on Tue, 10/26/2010 - 4:05pm
Officials from the MBTA and the MetroWest Regional Transit Authority will gather tomorrow to announce you'll be able to use CharlieCards on MWRTA buses.
The formal announcement is at 11:30 a.m. at the Woodland stop on the Green Line.
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Comments
MBCR?
So why is it impossible for them to get CharlieCards to work on the commuter rail? It's been four or five years now. I seem to remember, when CharlieCards were first introduced, the MBTA claimed they'd be admissible on the commuter rail within a year's time.
Lastest word on this
(from the MBCR's Fall Newsletter) is that they are now looking for riders and others to serve on a "Customer Advisory Panel" to discuss development and implementation of electronic fare collection on the commuter rail. The details can be found at:
http://www.mbcr.net/customer%20service/Fall_Newsle...
To put it another way, all those years since Charlie was first implemented on the subway and they're still stuck at square one for adding it to commuter rail.
but still not on the Ts own
but still not on the Ts own commuter rail?
Charlie
And the plastic Charlie Cards still can't hold an Express Bus pass on them. The T hasn't been able to afford 15 minutes of progamming for the last 5 years. GM Davies: a simple answer to excessive load times.
If that is true. I would
If that is true. I would program that for free (I'm a CS student and this might take some time, but that's better than doing nothing). If they can't afford to pay, they can just make me an intern so I can put it on my resume.
CharlieCards can't hold
CharlieCards can't hold express bus passes because those passes are valid on the commuter rail, but there's no way for conductors to accept CharlieCards yet.
That's the same reason why there's a Zone 1A pass which costs the same as a Link pass: so the machine can refuse to sell it to you on a CharlieCard.
They could solve this by having the ticket machine ask you if it's ok if your pass wouldn't work on the commuter rail, if you started by tapping your card. If you say no, then it would print the pass on a ticket; otherwise, it would go on your card.
You *can* put a 1 or 7 day Link pass on a CharlieCard, even though they're valid on commuter rail zone 1A. But you have to get a T employee to log into the ticket machine, or go to a retail sales location.
This is great!
I sometimes use the Green Line to Woodland and then take the MWRTA #1 bus up Route 9 to work. This is great news!
Would be nice to get this working on other quasi-MBTA bus lines
The T subcontracts with various private companies to run buses with numbers that begin with 700. Most of these are in outlying areas such as Winthrop, Hull, and Canton, but one of them is in Medford, of all places. They don't accept Charlie Cards. Some of them accept monthly and weekly passes on Charlie Tickets, but not stored value Charlie Tickets. It's a confusing jumble.
This probably has more
This probably has more benefits than drawbacks, but I'm still no fan of the Charlie fareboxes.
Anyone know how much this cost? It couldn't have been cheap.
Are MBTA monthly passes good on MWRTA?
I can't tell from any of the news stories, nor can I find anything at all about this on the MWRTA or MBTA web site.