[HN Gopher] We'll Miss You, MetroCard Machine
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We'll Miss You, MetroCard Machine
Author : danso
Score : 20 points
Date : 2022-09-02 16:52 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.curbed.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.curbed.com)
| msoad wrote:
| Came back from Berlin to NYC.
|
| In Berlin there was no gates. You just walk to the train. You
| were suppose to buy the ticket and show it if they ask for it.
| Even that is unnecessary in the US. The best payment system for
| public transportation is no payment. In the US it doesn't cover
| much of the fare anyways but has so much overhead for the MTA.
| People who try to dodge the fare are actually poor and the most
| deserving of not paying anyways.
| bergenty wrote:
| What nonsense. I was in Berlin last month, the ticket buying
| experience is abysmal. The machines don't work. Sometime (don't
| know when) you can only buy tickets on the train since they
| don't have ticket machines at every station. When you do try to
| use the machines it's some ridiculous combination of zones and
| unspellable names you have to type out to get your ticket that
| isn't intuitive at all.
|
| In NYC, buy ticket on machine -> works for one trip wherever
| you're going in the city. Outside the city? Just talk to the
| person at the ticket window and they tell you what to get.
| msoad wrote:
| The 9 Euro ticket was super easy to buy for me. I bought it
| in the airport. Not sure why it was so hard for you. I don't
| speak a single word of German either.
| bergenty wrote:
| Isn't that like a limited time thing? Try starting at a
| random station and navigating from there. I was at
| seegersfeld trying to get into Berlin and it was
| ridiculous. Also getting back there at the end of the
| night.
| Lacerda69 wrote:
| You are correct, it was limited thing from july to august
| this summer. unfortunately it's over now. it had a lot of
| benefits, making public transport really easy for
| everyone was just one. it also saved a ton of co2 and
| enabled a lot of people to travel around the country, who
| werent able otherwise.
|
| RIP 9EUR ticket, you will be sorely missed:/
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Pacific Northwest region of the US uses that honor system on
| public transit
| pessimizer wrote:
| The version of the honor system where somebody asks to see
| your ticket once every 10-20 rides. When I lived in Portland,
| I was never brave enough to get on without a ticket, because
| I didn't want to have to pay a way bigger ticket.
|
| That system is an outlier to the total control and
| surveillance that is the modern expectation/demand.
| randomopining wrote:
| Berlin sucks. A bit confusing and then they pay guys to walk
| around and check for tickets.
| Lacerda69 wrote:
| If you know what to look for you can always spot the
| controllers, so they are easy to avoid. not easy for
| foereigners of course, but honestly as tourist most public
| transport anywhere is confusing if you're not used to it.
| wan23 wrote:
| 38% of the MTA's operating budget comes from train and bus
| fares. As much as it would be nice if it were free, the money
| needs to come from somewhere.
| cagenut wrote:
| in order to reverse the incentives that brought us the
| current system design, the net of road-taxes/tolls vs public-
| transit-fares should be re-balanced until transit is free and
| driving has incremental costs, as opposed to the current
| effective inverse.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| My friend's phone died while we were out in NYC, during one of
| the times with partial Covid restrictions. It was funny at first
| but then it stopped being funny because we really couldn't do a
| single thing together!
|
| Charge phone at a Starbucks? Can't enter, his vaccination card
| was on his phone!
|
| Slightly better now, but this is really an over reliance and the
| ubuiquity of having a phone. I get they are doing some sort of
| fallback with the OMNY machines, but I know how these contracts
| are cut.
| twiss wrote:
| I'll forgive it for being designed a long time ago, but as a
| tourist I found the MetroCard machines very frustrating because
| they insist on a 5-digit postal code when paying by card, but I
| have a 4-digit one. I tried left- and right-padding it, and
| entering all zeros, but it wouldn't let me pay. It reminded me of
| "falsehoods programmers believe about addresses".
| teknolog wrote:
| Try living in Britain which uses alphanumerical postal codes.
| Confuses the hell out of everybody in the US.
|
| (It does have the curious upside that your postal code + street
| number is almost always a unique identifier, so most forms
| start by asking for those and then autocomplete the rest.)
| cbracken wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of using a Canadian credit card in the US and
| occasionally being prompted to enter your zip code. Canadian
| postal codes are an alternating sequence of six letters and
| numbers (A1A 1A1). Turns out that in most cases, you can enter
| just the digits from your postal code in order then right pad
| with zeros. Perhaps not on MetroCard machines though!
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| The metrocard machines are interesting not just because they are
| easier to use then any other subway kiosk I've encountered but
| that they are unhackable. People have been trying to beat them
| since they were first installed and the closest anyone ever got,
| that I am aware of, is if you crease the card in just the right
| way so that the turnstile can detect the magnetic signal but bit
| read it entirely, it will let you through after swiping four
| times. Though supposedly the MTA cops know this trick and look
| for people with creased cards - in minority neighborhoods anyway.
| The cards themselves seem to have no stored value but instead
| point to a record in a central database.
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| Or that much of the system ran on OS/2:
|
| https://tedium.co/2019/06/13/nyc-subway-os2-history
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