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Switched off Red Line
By adamg on Tue, 12/01/2009 - 8:08am
Switch problems at Davis are making for a, ahem, fun commute this morning.
Ryan Evans says run away:
Massive crowd on inbound side at Davis Sq T stop.
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Comments
yup, signal problems the
yup, signal problems the entire ride. what was also fun was that the Charlie machines weren't taking credit or debit cards - system crashed, AGAIN, on the 1st day of the month. the MBTA worker gave me the genius response of, "it's the 1st of the month" as if that should explain it all, and we should all be happy with having to shell out extra money b/c the system doesn't work. here's an idea - and it's not all that novel or crazy - have the monthly passes available before the 1st of the month so people can get them ahead of time and not only on one day. Also, why can't the T please hire some better tech people to figure out how to prevent the system from crashing? Is it really that difficult? The kids at MIT can get a car on top of a building but the T can't figure out how to handle credit cards???? what year is the T functioning in? I am just SO SICK of the machine crashes, the signal problems, the track fires, the delays, the possibility of derailment. It's complete BS that they can't fix this system. MBTA leadership, go to Washington DC and check out their system - I rode it for 8 years and it actually worked - I can't remember ANY machine crashes, and delays were infrequent. If they want more riders they'd better fix it fast, because come spring I am purchasing a vehicle and getting off the Red Line, hopefully for good.
Um, you can get monthly
Um, you can get monthly passes before the first of the month. You can get them starting about halfway through the prior month. I bought mine yesterday.
Passes are available 15 days prior
Actually I'm not sure the actual number of days, but on the CharlieCard machine it mentions you can buy passes in advance for the upcoming month. I did it myself the last few months.
Yeah, they've been making
Yeah, they've been making announcements about it for the last couple months. I think you can get them after the 15th of the current month for the following month. Something like that.
Alex is right -- you can buy
Alex is right -- you can buy month passes at least a week before the month starts
yes, on the 15th
So said a customer service guy to me yesterday. I'll bet the system was extra overloaded because a lot of folks were out of town for the holiday and weren't around to purchase their passes ahead of time. Just a theory; the T management still bites the weenie.
The monthly passes ARE
The monthly passes ARE available before the first of the month. I bought mine last week.
well.
The monthly passes are available beginning on the 15th of the previous month. This is announced in the stations over the intercom over and over. But never let facts get in the way of a good rant, huh?
AMEN AMEN AMEN AMEN
AMEN AMEN AMEN AMEN
Happens Every Time
I'm pretty tired of the first-of-the-month crashes, too, especially since they've happened almost like clockwork since the machines were installed. Don't get me wrong, I like the Charlie Card and the way it speeds up boarding a bus when all or even most other passengers have them, but the machines are ridiculously prone to this error.
It's good that one can buy a pass prior to the first of the month, but that can't be an excuse for a systemic malfunction at the time everyone needs those machines to work. Blaming the passenger for not buying a pass earlier is no good -- would you tolerate your boss paying you a few days late? Would you go back to Dunkin if there were a 20-minute wait because you didn't order your coffee at the time of their choosing?
next month's crash...
it ought to be fun next month with the month and year turning over. Thankfully, T traffic will be mercifully light on the morning of Jan. 1.
A Monthly MBTA Scandal?
It's probably deliberate. Since the MBTA is sunk in so much debt, they probably deliberately crash their system on the first of each month knowing that most T riders with monthly passes renew them that day and that many of them will just shrug and pay an extra $2.00 for a Charlie Ticket.
My question is: where is the investigative reporting on this potential MBTA scandal? The Boston Metro exposed their silent strike in 2007, and with all the turmoil at the MBTA one would think that Hank Phillippi Ryan and Fox Undercover would have MBTA informants on speed dial by now.
And don't even get me started about how the T tried to cover up a disabled train at Reservoir on the Green Line this morning; we were delayed about 20 minutes and not even a single T Alert about it.
Nonsense
Don't attribute to malice and conspiracy what is easily explained by incompetence.
The system crashes because they expect people to renew sooner than the first date that their card doesn't work...but that's completely against our society's nature. They didn't have the money/programming ability/foresight to handle every single pass machine trying to submit credit card info and pass updates at the exact same time at the head machine.
Ta da.
Re: Nonsense
Kaz,
You're probably right, though given how deceptive the MBTA is I wouldn't put it past them. At the very least, if they know it's a problem that occurs every month, why haven't they fixed it? Is the extra revenue they might make off this glitch worth more to them than consumer satisfaction and a positive reputation/public image (something that could lead to far greater revenue in the long run)?
Not the best at fixing things, are they?
There are signal problems on nearly a daily basis on the MBTA, and they can't seem to resolve *that*. But I've gotta agree with the comment about not confusing conspiracy with incompetence. I'm going with the latter on both counts.
A NATIONAL TRANSIT CONSPIRACY!!!
Why does every straphanger innately distrust the operator who carries them, through hell or high water, from point A to point B instead of trying to actually find out what's wrong...is it perhaps because in the end they're afraid of becoming advocates for the system instead of pointlessly bitching about elabourate deceptions???
Monthly passes need to change
The "monthly" pass needs to be a truly monthly pass and this would solve all of these problems. Instead of buying "December", you buy "December 15-January 15". A warning on the gates could tell you when your coming close to your last date as a reminder to re-up, but then instead of EVERYONE in the entire MBTA renewing on the same day, you've got 30 different renewal dates and over a short amount of time, their renewals would begin to space out very evenly so that every day was about only 1/30th of the total load and the system wouldn't ever choke on that. A few days would probably still be a little heavier than normal, but even if 50% of the people still bought their tickets on the 1st of the months, that's better than the 90% that it is now because people just let their passes run out by default.
(technical note: if you buy your pass on a date that doesn't exist in another month, then you have to buy it by the last day of that next month...thus by February any late month pass buyers will be buying on the 28th...but with still far less of a load than the 1st sees currently)
Of course, this kind of a system would take a *little* bit of computer engineering to program correctly and having seen the limited capability of the current design and how easily people have hacked the system because it's completely inept in a lot of ways...I don't have a lot of faith in the MBTA to implement something like this correctly...so welcome to system crashes every 1st of the month! Yay!
Why not 30 day passes?
I like the idea as you're pitching, but why not make the passes 30 days from the date of purchase, rather than a calendar month.
I get a plastic ticket for my Zone 1 commuter rail pass, so they simply send it to me, but I'm looking forward to the passes being loaded onto the CharlieCard.
Renewable Charlie cards?
The monthly Charlie cards we get through work just renew each month. Is there a way to renew them online or something for people not purchasing them through work? It seems that the basic system is already in place if they're able to have it set up so they can remotely renew my pass each month.
YES!
But of course!
Do it before the first of the month. You can even set up a recurring plan! Apparently the whole system is down right now because of the aforementioned massive return from the holiday or whatnot overloading the system. Regardless, do set this up for subsequent purchases and your card will update with the new pass the next morning after your purchase online.
Regularity is all
Well, one thing people like is regularity ("I always get my T pass on the 12th..."). It helps them schedule mindlessly. If you made it "30 days" instead of "monthly" then on months with 31 days they're going to have to renew "a day early" and they'll feel ripped off (even though they'll be getting 2 EXTRA days out of February that the current passes screw you on...har har). It'll change their schedule ("I got it on the 12th this month...but next month it'll be on the 11th..."). And while it's not much, a "30 day" pass would cause people to lose 5 days a year (you currently buy 12 "monthly" passes to cover 365 days, 12 "30 day" passes would only cover 360 days...and oh my, 6!, on leap years!).
So, for most people, they'll still want "monthly" and it's only a little confusing at the end of the month for one or two months before you're synced to the 30th (or the 1st) instead of the 31st and then the 28th instead of the 29th-31st in February...and then you're always on the 28th.
From what I've read, the TVMs
From what I've read, the TVMs are relatively new and apparently it isn't nearly as stable as the much older system that has been implemented in New York City (which admittedly still doesn't yet use smart cards with RFID tags, like the CharlieCard).
The MBTA, with respect to the WMATA, has considerably less attention from Federal lawmakers. Don't beat up on the MBTA and put the WMATA on a pedestal. WMATA has had its fare share of accidents, and both have had more severe accidents in the past few years than the much older and larger MTA in New York City.
EVERY transit agency in the nation (save a few that have been receiving national attention due to some high profile government officers bringing them to light) has been hurting - for decades, Federal, state, and municipal governments have been reducing their commitments to our transit agencies and pushing them to put more of the burden on riders (fare hikes) and debt spending (which comes with increasing interest payments). This is how we, as city commuters of America, a group that far outweighs the people who commute by car, suffer...'machine crashes, the signal problems, the track fires, the delays, the possibility of derailment'.
I call YOU to go to MassDOT and tell THEM to go do what they need to do, because MBTA and MBCR have their hands tied...or perhaps read up on transit issues and become a proper advocate of the system you use and need every single day. MBTA is hardly infallible and blameless, but bashing them is considerably less productive than calling the attention of your huge follower base to the true origin of our daily woes.
DC's Metro
Oh, Washington has their problems. Browse DCist.com every now and then. Here's the latest major problem from earlier in the month: Metro Outages
Those Charlie Card/Pass machines
Look suspiciously like Micro$oft-based machines....that may explain part of the problem.
And one attempt at trying to execute any transaction with them on the first of the month
is enough to make you do your business in the last week of any given month.
Spelling it "Micro$oft" is so
Spelling it "Micro$oft" is so 1997 dude.
The T would have screwed this up if they were on *nix, mac, solaris, anything really.
Good point by you...
Just an old UNIX dinosaur, showing my age. And the idea of MBTA attempting to run
anything more complicated than "Next, Next, Next, Finish!" is scary in a Biblical kind
of way.
Charlie Card
What IS Scary is that you are correct!
The entire charlie card system is based on Microsoft Windows. The gates are basically Windows XP Embedded. I watched them one day set one up, and it had a nice windows XP startup screen and desktop appear before launching the gate client software.
The back end is Microsoft too. Again during installation, they converted one of the old token booths to a 'server room' and left the door open one day. Lots of nice pretty HP Servers in a rack running Microsoft Windows Server 2003.
Which leads me to believe that the T has specific network setup. The gates and the vending machines are XP Clients, which talk to a server somewhere in the station, that server then communicates with a central database at the T's headquarters in the state transportation building via a private connect (such as frame relay or T1).
The buses I assume connect via the cellular network, however it isn't a "live" update, rather a central server at the bus garage "polls" the buses every few minutes for updates to and from the farebox. This is why its important for the driver to login/logout the farebox as soon as they start a route. (to tell the farebox to contact the server at the bus garage).
Im sure this is a simple explanation how it works, but I am sure it is far more complicated, such as what records are sent to the stations, when, how often, freshness data, etc etc. (me being a geek might be interested in learning how this all works). Of course, this allows for EXTREME flexibility with the system. (say 10 cent rides all day with one click of a mouse), HOWEVER the T does not require a swipe to exit a gate, which will backfire on them later if they decide to move to distance based fares (much like BART in SF has)
I am also sure that this is why this system is riddled with problems. Its windows based, its PC based and not embedded hardware, and its on one very large network with multiple syncing databases. I'm just waiting for a -20 degree day where all the gates outside just fail due to weather. :) (PC's don't like it THAT cold..) Sorry folks, embedded hardware doesn't have these problems.
This MIGHT explain the issues people have on the 1st. Bottom line: The database is overloaded updating peoples cards. BUT, this can be corrected by adding more servers to the cluster. Then again, this state is bankrupt so who knows if it will ever be done.
If the T moved to 30 day passes instead of by month, this would eliminate the database overload at the 1st of the month. And this would suit people's needs better.
And one final thought, since its all windows based, its just gonna get worse from here. There's a ROI involved here, remember XP is from 2001, in 2 years this OS is gonna be 10 years old. So the T is going to have to upgrade EVERYTHING in a few years to meet more modern computing standards of the future. Of course this is the T, and the old token system had been around since the 1960s and before, so I bet in about 50 years we'll still see the XP boot up screen on fare gates! :)
PS - And I can't wait for them to do an upgrade to the database or client workstations, its gonna bring the whole system to a crashing halt!
Youre pretty much right on
Youre pretty much right on all points.
An example of a quick system wide change was when the sunday guest was taken away for monthly pass users. Someone clicked a button and monthly passes stopped letting two people in on Sundays.
While this was a bad change, if they bring it back it should be just as easy to do.
I assume demand based fares would be just as easy to implement.
Too Late?
Correct me if I'm recollecting badly here...But I believe that the Green Line had almost exactly this problem last winter; the fare boxes wouldn't boot up in the morning due to the cold, which caused (drum-rolls please...) delays.
Cold in New England? Why didn't anyone warn me!?!
Well that explains a lot!
Microsoft = Steaming pile of doodie.
fine, you were right
fine, you guys win on that one small point I was wrong about - yes you CAN get a monthly pass prior to the 1st of the month - tt still doesn't explain the frequency of the machines crashing, nor does it excuse it. If the T wants to increase ridership, they should be able to accomodate an increased number of riders and T-pass buyers, not sink under the weight of them. There also doesn't explain why some features, like transferring ticket value to cards, is available at some stations and not at others. At some stations there aren't even any T employees on site to help with this. It also would not hurt them to make a "single-ride pass" available in the first screen on the machine - I can't recall how many times I've had to show confused out-of-towners how to purchase a single ride by using "other amount".
And I also agree with a previous poster that said that monthly passes should be available for 30 days. I've lost Charlie Cards in the middle of the month before, and had to get a new one. It would be great if that pass were available for the next 30 days instead of the next 2 weeks.
All I'm saying is, with the wealth of technology, intelligence and money available in Boston, these should not be difficult problems to solve. There is no reason why Boston's system should be so far behind New York's and Washington's. And yes, it is a rant - I hate having to rely on a faulty system. Don't tell me that if I don't like it, I don't have to ride it - I DO have to ride it, to work every day, and I don't have much of a choice, and I've lived in places with much more efficient systems in place, and I see no reason why Bostonians should settle for a clearly faulty system.
CharlieCard on the Web
Lindsay,
I won't apologize for the other poster talking down to you. I will however point out to you and to others on this board a few things I can only hope you consider 'productive'.
Note that you can register your CharlieCard online, purchase all sorts of passes, and even contact the MBTA that you've lost your CharlieCard in order to deactivate your lost card and transfer your balances and passes to a new one. I've never lost a CharlieCard (in fact, I seem to be accumulating more than I will ever need) so I don't know how smooth or tumultuous that process is, but it may help to always have two CharlieCards on hand and registered on the site to make it easier for MBTA customer service to help. Chances are, they might have to send you out a new card in the post if you don't have a second on hand...
As for the stuck situation we're in, I suggest you look at my post in reply to yours earlier. It's not much more productive than your comments, which I find to be standard fare as far as bitching about transit systems by ignorant riders goes.
I find most riders don't actually know about how We (the collective We that comprises transit operators and transit users in America) got here and that a lot of it has to do with forced debt spending by the government, and operators having to 'make do' with what we have.
It's clearly not free to fix something and its not the MBTA's fault when outside contractors do a shitty job and leave them to deal with the costs of fixing something after the fact. I don't work for the MBTA, MTA, WMATA, LAMTA, or any other transit agency, but I do know that they have fixed budgets that have been shrinking for decades, with increasing costs from deferred maintenance and aging systems. Don't forget inflation decreases the value of the dollar, so a flat year-to-year budget can fund less over time...think about a shrinking budget...
*EVERYONE*'s hands are tied - if you're looking for people to blame, to bitch at, to strongarm to get things fixed, look at the legislators who have been putting less and less to transit and more and more to the inefficient roads in our cities and encouraging sprawl and more traffic that holds up our buses, makes us miss our connections, and deal with all the shit you are rightfully upset about.
I'd recommend you look up Streetsblog and Infrastructurist to read up on these issues, because they're just as important, if not moreso than healthcare reform...
Management, too
I should also note that I'm not saying management isn't at all responsible for stuff either. In fact, tighter budgets multiply the magnitude and quantity of ramifications for poor management. That isn't to say that poor management on the transit agency side got here, but one can say that certain agencies woes and system ailments are a result of such poor management. This is also not a good reason to not better fund transit, because heck...we all have to ride it.
Monthly passes are available online
https://commerce.mbta.com/
Buy Monthly Passes
Buy January 2010 Monthly Passes Online Now (through December 22nd)
While you cant add a monthly pass to your card yet (coming next year), you can buy a paper pass in advance. You CAN add value to your card however.
Or, like the 20 previous comments mentioned, 15 days earlier at any machine.
So much for that rant huh?
Lyndsay, why would you buy a second monthly pass?
Weekly passes cost almost the exact thing as a monthly pass, $15 a week vs $59 a month. And weekly passes start when you buy them.
With clever time management, you can save money by buying weekly passes (for example, if your pass expires friday night, you may not need another one until monday)
hey J - did you not see me
hey J - did you not see me acknowledge that I stand corrected on my statement about buying cards beforehand? Is that all you read of what I posted?
Yes, thanks, I understand that I can buy online "with clever time management" - there's no need to be condescending. I'm not an idiot. My issue is with the machines crashing constantly and the lack of options on the machines in general.
Do you work for the T? You seem intent on pointing out my errors instead of making a constructive comment on what I have to say with regard to the MBTA system as a whole.
No, I actually did not see
No, I actually did not see your entire post for some reason or another. Perhaps I scrolled down too quickly. I was not being condescending, but I cant say the same about you.
I dont know how pointing out other options (online and weekly passes) is not considered constructive.
this is getting ridiculous
I've been making a trip twice a week from Alewife to Warren St on the B line. I am now having to allot 1.5 hours each way for this trip because of 'switch problems' and general problems on the green line.