How the T could reduce its financial problems
By adamg - Mon, 04/07/2008 - 9:29am.
Radical concept, but: Collect fares on the Green Line.
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How about this? No?
Rather than collecting fares at the entrance to the cars (or having roving T employees manning the doors in the rear), is there no way to close off some of the open platforms and add fare gates? Something like what exists at Lechmere? Collecting fares at the door of the front car really does seem rather inefficient, but its not cost-effective to just let people board and ride without paying.
Curitiba-Style?
Fare gate and shelter from the elements all in one!
I really wonder why they didn't incorporate this sort of design in the most recent platform renovations, but "best practices" and "Boston" don't often mix.
Hey, if a cash-strapped Brazillian city can innovate like this ...
A better idea
Put CharlieCard readers at each non-front door of each Green Line car. These would be for CharlieCards only - no cash, no paper tickets.
Some stations would be very hard to refit with fare gates -- for instance, Longwood, where the station doubles as a pedestrian access from the neighborhood to the Riverway park.
Charlie strikes again
I agree with Ron. In my days on the green line it was always known that you really didn't have to have the money because half the time you didn't have to pay. Opening all the doors probably isn't a good idea. Even if you do have the money most people are still prone to run to a free door.
Opening all the doors is necessary, however
since otherwise it would be nearly impossible to exit the train at many stops. It also reduces dwell time at stations. Before Charlie, when they opened only the front door at Symphony and Prudential, it took forever to get through those stops.
Opening the doors is just
Opening the doors is just about the only option:
1) People don't/won't move into the car. This clogs up an already 2) frustrating boarding situation, watching a ticket be sucked in and spit out five or six times or, worse, 3) the yokel paying with dimes or wet dollar bills.
The MBTA obviously didn't think through the ramifications of this system for street level stops (emblematic of designers and upper-level execs not realizing how things work at an operational level. They were sold a bill of goods by salesmen. Now they have to live with it).
The new fare gates works in the stations, mostly. It is not practical for street-level boarding, especially on the single-car consists that have reappeared on the Green Line.
Operators open all doors and wave people on to speed boarding, stay on schedule, beat the traffic signals, etc. MOSTLY (though not in my examples linked to by Adam), but MOSTLY, they allow a percentage of potential freeloaders to board in order to stay on schedule. I sympathize with what they have to do, and lay the blame squarely on MBTA management for this disaster.
Open door policy
One of the reasons they need to open the doors is the design of the new low-floor trains. While I'm glad they came up with trains that were easier for persons with disabilities to use, the design of those trains encourages people to not fully load the train. If you're only opening the front door, anyone getting out will be encouraged to stay on the top platform near the front door because if the train filled up and they were in the back, it would be impossible to get out. That was a problem with the old cars but its even worse with the new ones. If I'm on the back elevated platform, its extremely difficult to even get out to the back door when all are opened. I stopped moving all the way in on those trains because I was just making it impossible for myself to get out again.
What's more, the way those trains are easier for people to board is completely lost if you only open the front door. While a person in a wheel chair obviously needs that, what about the elderly who would also be better served by a small step up instead of climbing in, climbing down, climbing back up and climbing out? You need to open all the doors to maximize the value of the car design. Which is what makes it such a stupid design.
I agree that having validation machines at the back doors would help. A lot of people would act on the honor system and tap their cards. But the whole system is a mess and can't be easily fixed given the structural flaws in the system.
Good in theory, but there 's a catch
People would just walk right by them - especially many of the students on the B Line who feel entitled to a free ride anywhere they want to go.
Proof-Of-Payment is the only way to make it work. Random spot checks of people on the train would do wonders to keep people honest. I believe L.A. uses such a system.
If you haven't paid, then you get a fine and are kicked off at the next stop. The fines multiply by a factor of four each time you are caught.
There's no reason to force paying passengers to deal with a crush level train overflowing with freeloaders.
Random Spot-Checks
I don't think these will work well here. There is too much discretion by the spot check folks in who they target, and the system doesn't work well when a train is crowded to the gills - which is the time when most people will get the free rides.
Far better to just gate as many stops as possible, and then do front-door only boarding at stops where it isn't possible or where there aren't many people getting on. Gating off only large and semi-enclosed stops would speed up the trains a great deal.
SwirlyGrrl is an example of
SwirlyGrrl is an example of someone who doesnt take the B line. When the train is full to the point that the doors have to be opened and closed repeatedly to make sure everybody is pushed inside, it is impossible to use only one door.
Someone else mentioned the problem with two people boarding underground with one card and splitting up. The MBTA did not add the validation on exit requirement that most similar systems have.
Validation on exit
is another idea that doesn't work very well in a combined subway-streetcar system such as ours. DC Metro and BART have no streetcars, and every station has fare gates.
The MBTA system is what you'd get if you combined BART with San Francisco's Muni streetcar system. Right now, those two agencies have entirely different fare systems, even at stations that serve both.
London requires you tap out,
London requires you tap out, but they dont even have gates in the outer stations.
So yes, its possible to have a mixed system
Tapping out
Tap-out or swipe-out requirements exist in systems where fares are variable, based on how far you travel, or what time of day you travel, or both. You're effectively paying on exit. London, BART, and WMATA (DC Metro) are like this; Boston and NYC are not.
If there are no gates at outer London stations, where do you tap out? What happens if you forget to tap out?
Huh?
Gee, looking for that one tiny sentence in a paragraph or two might help you with the MCAS questions next year. Try reading things first, eh?
Wasn't the "one door" problem EXACTLY why I brought up certain types of entry gate systems? They are much faster than even a front-door pay line. Just get on/get off. Did you think those Curitiba systems I posted are good for only one door?
One problem: Ron had a point about the stations where gates won't work. Those stations might have to be single door unless other options are available.
I did ride the B line and the E line to the medical area for a while but I gave up on the green line and got on my bike.
Ron: Im not sure how outer
Ron: Im not sure how outer stations in London work, I just know they dont have gates and they manage.
And even though most systems with tap out requirements do so because of distance or time based pricing, on the MBTA it would have been a good way to lower fare evasion, since its hard to beat the gate twice every ride.
SwirlyGrrl, take a stop like BU east. How do you enclose it? If you put a gate at either end, people could walk around it through the track. You cant put a gate at every door because the T uses different types of cars. The curitiba system has standard high level buses, the T is mixed.
Why try to invent a complicated outdoor gate system, when a validator at each entrance could work just as well?
Then just get roaming inspectors to check like every system in Europe, and how LA operates. How do you pay the staff? Easy, get the useless driver on the 2nd car to be an inspector instead of opening and closing doors, a task the front driver can do, or even better, the passengers could do (why didnt the bredas have passenger request doors like the new blue line cars and every bus/tram/trolley/train in europe?)
Tap-outs and the T
London doesn't have streetcars in its system, though. I don't know of a system that has both streetcars and a tap-out (or swipe-out) requirement. If you don't enclose a station like BU East, how could you require passengers to tap out there?
Also, the T would have to either eliminate revolving exit-only gates (such as at Central, Kendall, Hynes, Mass. Ave., and JFK/UMass), or convert them all to Charlie gates.
London calls them "Trams"
en.wikipedia.org...Current_trams
PDF map here:
tfl.gov.uk...Tram-system-map.pdf
Oyster card here:
oyster.tfl.gov.uk...entry.do
(I believe it's the same technology as the Charlie Card.)
mea culpa
I forgot about Docklands Light Railway; it had not yet been built when I last visited London. I'll have to try to learn more about London's fare system -- it seems quite complex compared to ours or New York's.
No, Docklands is something else again
(Not that I've *ever* been there, but I can read ...)
Docklands is, I believe, basically an el.
Tramlink is trolley cars.
fwiw
How London enforces tap-out
I just read up on it (see Oyster Card link).
Very simple. When you tap-in, it deducts GBP5 (about $10) from the card. When you tap-out, it refunds the difference.
How well that works, I have no idea.
And having to keep at least the maximum fare on your card at all times must be a PITA.
However ... they do things very strangely over there. There seems to be at least 4 different entities running local transportation. It's probably even more, I dunno.
My point about tapping out
My point about tapping out isnt means requiring it to exit the gates, not at all time.
The london one deducts extra money. The DC one wont let you out.
The hypothetical MBTA one would credit your card with an exit when you tapped in, but wouldnt require you to tap out at all times. That is, if youre in kenmore, the gate would only let you out if you tapped out, but you wouldnt be penalized if you got off at BU east where theres no tapping requirement. The exit credit could have a 2 hour limit.
Someone mentioned that the system needs receipts to verify payment. not true, cards and tickets store the last 10 transactions, and cash fares are supposed to receive receipts.
Receipts
The issue with receipts isn't about that. Its about the scenario when a friend pays your fare on his Charlie Card but then you split up during your trip. If you are the friend who had his fare paid, how do YOU verify your fare? Its the fundamental flaw in the system of sending out an army of fare validators to arrest supposed jumpers. There is a reasonable situation where a person wouldn't have proof of fare and couldn't have proof of fare, but did pay.
Also, people don't keep used-up CharlieTickets
People who buy $2 CharlieTickets and then immediately use them don't generally keep them afterwards. Sometimes they'll leave them at the fare gate, sometimes they'll drop them into trash cans or specially-marked "CharlieTicket recycling bins", sometimes they'll just drop them on the floor. But they don't keep the tickets. The T never tells people that they should keep the tickets.
Profiling
There would be accusations that the spot-checkers were profiling. Since low-income people have a greater incentive to evade fares, the statistics would seem to bear the accusations out even in the absence of bias. (Anyone with a monthly pass has zero incentive to cheat.)
How "spot-checks" work
They use an honor system with high penalties through spot-checks in many European countries (three I know personally are Berlin and Dresden, Germany and Zurich, Switzerland). A "spot check" doesn't mean randomly choosing people in the car to check. It means walking the entire car checking everyone. The "spot" chosen isn't the person, it's the car and time of day, but everyone the transit cop walks by is checked. This is not as easy, but not impossible on a crowded train.
The bigger problem is that unless they start generating some sort of receipt, they would have no way of validating that I had used a rear-door fare machine. The systems in Germany and Switzerland stamp your fare pass with a time stamp and you will pay a fine if you are found without a fare pass, with an expired time stamp, or with a fare pass that has not been stamped.
If you were to pay using a declining balance CharlieCard or CharlieTicket currently, they'd have no way to know whether you had paid your fare or not when they boarded the train to begin checking.
spot-checks
They could carry around machines that read a CharlieTicket or CharlieCard to see if it was recently debited.
But you can't really have spot checks unless you have a "one rider, one fare medium" policy, and that usually goes along with a "you must swipe or tap out" policy. Something that the Boston, NYC, and Chicago systems explicitly do not have.
Spot checks
I've been a "Schwarzfahrer" myself once or twice in Germany, not by intent but by not understanding that I had to stamp my ticket after getting on. Fortunately, I was never caught, or I would have had to pretend I don't know a word of German. :)
Even with checking whole trains, there could still be claims of profiling on the basis of which trains were checked most often.
I don't see how proof of payment would really work, though
For instance:
Andy, Beth, Carol, Don, Edward, and Leanne enter at Harvard Square station, all using Andy's stored-value CharlieCard.
At Park Street, Andy stays on the Red Line train, while the rest of the gang walk upstairs to the Green Line level.
Beth gets on a B train to BU, Carol a C train to Coolidge Corner, Don a D train to Newton Centre, Edward an E train to Brigham Circle, and Leanne a train to Lechmere.
Since all of them used one card to enter, only one of them now has a proof of payment.
(And this example still works if they entered on Andy's stored-value CharlieTicket instead of a CharlieCard.)
Might not work anyway
Portland, OR has a system where you buy the tickets at the station and then board with a ticket or a pass. Even if you use one credit card, you get for payment slips.
HOWEVER ...
As the light rail system has expanded and the ridership has steadily climbed, guess what: people are getting free rides.
This is happening even with the extreme reputation of fare inspectors. There are not enough inspectors, and the trains are too crowded at peak times for them to be effective.
Portland also has a free-fare zone downtown
which probably makes fare enforcement even more challenging.
Ah
But are they meeting Fred, Gail, Harry, Izzy, Jerry, Kayleigh, Marcia, Norm, Opal and Quentin for drinks after?
Fair takers?
The best option I can see would probably be costly. Either put a fare checker at each door on the train (meaning, an actual person with a card reader) or have two fare checkers on each platform, whichever is cheaper. Even if you just did this during rush hours, it'd improve the situation considerably. As it stands, they just do this some of the time, which is really spot checking the wrong way. Instead of verifying payment on a spot-check basis, you're just collecting payment on a spot-check basis. If it was done as the rule during the day, a lot of evasion on the Green Line would be eliminated.
Deja Vu
http://www.universalhub.com/node/13628#comment-30866
All they need are validators
All they need are validators at all doors, or simply ones on platforms. And roaming inspectors to check them.
Remember how they tried this on the D line for about a week?
What about the times when
What about the times when you have to get off the train to let people out? What of that?
The Green Line is a clusterf*ck.
green fatigue
There are some seriously good ideas here. The frustration is that none of them are ever going to be implemented.