T screws the pooch
Dec. 5th, 2006 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmazeThis morning I did, in fact, succeed in acquiring three CharlieCards at the Davis T. I showed them to a coworker today, who said, "huh, what are those?" and was surprised when I told him that you needed them to not get hosed even worse by the fare hike. I also saw this post in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
davis_square with more people being confused. And for that matter, if I didn't specifically know that they were handing out CharlieCards and that I wanted one, I would have registered the person as "person handing out irrelevant junk".
In between the fare restructuring and the prox card system, this really is a major change for T passengers. The T has at least given a token effort to communication, but without heavy attention to Usenet and mbta.com the vast majority of passengers (and certainly my coworkers) seem to have no clue what's going on. People might be less irate if they got told that subway passes went up about 35% just like all the other fares and got local bus access, instead of thinking that they got forced from subway passes on to more expensive combo passes which were inexplicably discounted. I think most people know there will be a fare increase but will be upset when their subway fare is $2 and not the promised $1.70 (and not $1.25); and most passholders are probably totally unaware that their free guest on Sunday is going away.
This is just a communication issue. The Diesel ran into something similar with their coffee cards, and wound up pushing back a significant change by six weeks. It's not too late for the T; they can still do things like have subway drivers announce the CharlieCard handouts. Fundamentally, it's something that has more practical impact to the typical commuter than "please report any unattended bags or packages to an MBTA employee"; shouldn't the T give it at least as much attention?
davis_square with more people being confused. And for that matter, if I didn't specifically know that they were handing out CharlieCards and that I wanted one, I would have registered the person as "person handing out irrelevant junk".In between the fare restructuring and the prox card system, this really is a major change for T passengers. The T has at least given a token effort to communication, but without heavy attention to Usenet and mbta.com the vast majority of passengers (and certainly my coworkers) seem to have no clue what's going on. People might be less irate if they got told that subway passes went up about 35% just like all the other fares and got local bus access, instead of thinking that they got forced from subway passes on to more expensive combo passes which were inexplicably discounted. I think most people know there will be a fare increase but will be upset when their subway fare is $2 and not the promised $1.70 (and not $1.25); and most passholders are probably totally unaware that their free guest on Sunday is going away.
This is just a communication issue. The Diesel ran into something similar with their coffee cards, and wound up pushing back a significant change by six weeks. It's not too late for the T; they can still do things like have subway drivers announce the CharlieCard handouts. Fundamentally, it's something that has more practical impact to the typical commuter than "please report any unattended bags or packages to an MBTA employee"; shouldn't the T give it at least as much attention?
no subject
Date: 2006-12-05 03:09 pm (UTC)