Minor T observations
Jan. 29th, 2007 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmazeLots of Green Line trains parked in the subway yesterday morning -- several Bredas parked on the unloved station track at Park Street, one on the stub track there, one on the loop at Government Center. I wonder what it meant. The trains going through to GC/North Station/Lechmere were by and large Bredas too, though.
The CharlieTicket machine UI really is that terrible, if you just want to buy a ticket to go somewhere and come back. Warnings that CharlieCard fares are cheaper are pretty useless if you don't already have a card since there's no way to get one. I didn't go down the rathole of pressing the only thing on the top-level screen that said "Tickets" (on its own line; maybe it's "commuter rail" or subway "tickets"? more plausible than "stored value"). $5 is not an integral number of subway fares, it doesn't tell you how many subway fares it is, it (apparently by design) doesn't tell you what the subway fare actually is.
I've also noticed, though not yesterday, that nobody even sees the screens on the CharlieGates. On the handicapped gates they're well below eye level. On the normal gates they're obscured by the rest of the equipment. So if they say "smart cards only" because they've conveniently eaten some poor sucker's $59 commuter rail pass you're not going to notice this until maybe after you've tried to feed your own stored-value ticket in a couple of times and failed.
The CharlieTicket machine UI really is that terrible, if you just want to buy a ticket to go somewhere and come back. Warnings that CharlieCard fares are cheaper are pretty useless if you don't already have a card since there's no way to get one. I didn't go down the rathole of pressing the only thing on the top-level screen that said "Tickets" (on its own line; maybe it's "commuter rail" or subway "tickets"? more plausible than "stored value"). $5 is not an integral number of subway fares, it doesn't tell you how many subway fares it is, it (apparently by design) doesn't tell you what the subway fare actually is.
I've also noticed, though not yesterday, that nobody even sees the screens on the CharlieGates. On the handicapped gates they're well below eye level. On the normal gates they're obscured by the rest of the equipment. So if they say "smart cards only" because they've conveniently eaten some poor sucker's $59 commuter rail pass you're not going to notice this until maybe after you've tried to feed your own stored-value ticket in a couple of times and failed.
