CharlieCards

Jesse Legg says 90% of his rides on the Red and Orange Lines are good - he wonders why the T has no friends:

... Yeah, I did have a hard time getting my hands on a Charlie Card. Staff weren't there when I thought they should have been. Yeah, the new system is very questionable. Yeah, Copley Square station really smells. But public transit is a tremendous value to the region. It works better than many other quasi-public institutions. And it's a convenience, bordering on luxury, that doesn't exist in a majority of American cities.

TC says Charlie can kiss my ass, because all but two of the turnstiles at Malden Center were set to accept only CharlieCards today:

...Smart cards have only been distributed for the past week or so, and aren't going to hit major active use until January when they replace T Passes. So how is it that somebody thought there'd be such a dramatic increase in usage of them that it was necessary to devote the majority of the turnstiles to "smart cards only"? At rush hour! ...

A BadTransit correspondent gets to watch as an entire row of Charlie machines reboots at Porter Square - right into Windows XP.

The Globe's transportation reporter provides a handy video on how to use the new card - and shows why he desperately needs somebody at boston.com to change that dorky photo of him on his blog.

Jenny G reports she tried buying a CharlieCard at Davis Square with her credit card on Friday. Just wouldn't take. Finally, one of those roving T "ambassadors" told her the machines weren't accepting credit cards - so she used the last of the change in her purse to buy one. Surprise:

... Today I checked my credit card on line & see that I have been charged $10 for the Charlie card I didn't receive. I guess the system was working well enough to charge credit cards, just not well enough to provide Charlie cards for the charged amount. ...

Jason, on the Red Line:

When I ride the T, I am reminded of why I don't mind the hassles of owning and driving a car in the city.

Single Girl in the City, on the new extra-slow CharlieReaders on the Green Line (B trolley, to be exact):

The way I'm looking at it now, if I drop the T-pass and drop the gym membership and start walking the 5 miles each day, I'll get my workout in, save about $90 a month and probably get to where I'm going faster anyway....

Gary McGath notes the new CharlieCards will have RFID chips and that the T plans to retain information on where and when you get on the T for up to two years:

... It opens the possibility of privacy invasion, both by government agencies and by private parties. What information can be read by someone with a completely placed scanner? Does it have openly readable personal information? Anyone who issues an RFID-based personal ID should tell its users that, but the MBTA is telling us nothing. A Google search for "RFID" on mbta.com turns up no hits.

I'm not a fan of tinfoil hats, but a tinfoil wallet is starting to sound like a good idea to me.

Xjustquietx, though, doesn't buy it:

... For god's sake. So they're tracking where you get on the T in the morning and where you get on at night. So now the government knows where you WORK and LIVE. Like anyone with 5 seconds and an internet connection can't FIND THAT OUT ALREADY! GET THE FUCK OVER YOURSELVES! Oh wait, this says you went to Newbury Street on Saturday. Hmmm, maybe you LIKE SHOPPING. Is that EVEN POSSIBLE? IN AMERICA? IN BOSTON!? ...

John Daley notes the T's fare increase is timed to coincide with the formal launch of CharlieCards, which, of course, are named for the protagonist of a song who will never return, no, he'll never return, because he couldn't get offa that train after a fare increase:

... I suppose it makes sense since, just like Charlie, a lot of working people now won't have enough money to pay the fare.

More than you'll ever want to know about the song.

Somebody at the company that built the software for the new Charlie machines needs some help with decimal points.