Some Medford kids figured out how to hack CharlieCards to get free rides

in the software, if indeed you can change a card's properties by changing byte values at a set location.

Trust me, I'd love to see fare collection go away, it would solve many many problems.

But when it comes down to it.. its about dollars and cents.

But it's never going to happen here, not when the T is 'born broke' and will never get out of its debt hole its in. Until the state fixes the T's finances so they can have a balanced budget (HAHAHAHA) this will never happen.

You'd have better luck trying to catch a moon beam in your hand than think the T will go fare-ess.

Or just being intellectually dishonest again?

Without getting into whether it is a good idea (jury most certainly out) …

Free transit and free buses are not the same thing, fare-wise.

Based on pre-pandemic data (more recent data probably tracks, but is lower), the T collected about $660 million in annual fare revenue. About 5% of that comes from local bus-only fares, somewhere in the $30 to $40 million-per-year range. Most people have passes, or make bus-subway transfers, so bus, or bus-bus transfers, or bus-only passes, make up a small portion. This is based on the T's documentation for the 2019 fare increase (here) with some reasonable assumptions on "fare pass multiples" (see here).

Bus fares yield minimal revenue and are the costliest fares to collect, because every bus needs fare collection (and in the future, fare collection at each door), or every stop needs fare collection, or some combination. That's expensive! And unlike Commuter Rail or Rapid Transit, collecting fares slows down the operation of buses, which costs money (and means fewer riders, even those who are then going to pay a rapid transit fare). And leads to operator assaults (which costs he T money). So you're investing a lot of money in a fare system in order to collect a marginally small amount.

There's even a strategy where you could require people to pay a fare at major transfer points (Harvard, Forest Hills, Andrew, Nubian, etc) where you could concentrate fare collection equipment to bring this margin down more, although that would also bring about enforcement challenges. Make the stations fare-paid zones where you have to tap when you get off the bus or visit a fare machine. But again, that would probably mostly be for show.

Anyway, a reasonable fare policy would be one where the T optimized for collecting the highest amount of fare revenue with the smallest amount of fare collection equipment. The marginal cost to collect the first 80-90% of fare revenue is quite low (people are honest/already have a pass/etc). The last 10-20% gets harder and harder to collect until the marginal cost to collect the last fare (or the last 1 or 2% of fares) is infinite. No matter what you do, there will always be scofflaws bent on getting around paying fares. Rather than spending billions to make it impossible for them not to pay fares, spend millions to make it easy for everyone else.

There's a corollary with MassDOT's All Electronic Tolling (AET) on the Pike (and harbor bridge/tunnels). With toll booths, pretty much everyone had to pay a toll (unless you went through the exact change line or paid with Canadian pennies or whatever), but it cost a lot of money dealing with cash and labor and infrastructure. FastLane-and-then-EZPass made it much easier to pay tolls, but there is always the potential to lose out on some toll revenue. AET replaced all of the tolling infrastructure for about $100 million, when rebuilding all of the toll booths would have probably cost three or four times as much, plus paying Toll Booth Willie to collect his quarters. Instead, the State is willing to accept some amount of "leakage" in order to have a system which is faster, safer and easier for everyone, and costs a lot less to operate. Imagine if the same idea was afforded to people taking transit?

Interestingly, a bunch of states are not doing this. New Hampshire studied AET vs "open road tolling" (basically, EZPass lanes in the middle and toll booths on the side) and found that AET was significantly less expensive in the long run when taking into account capital costs. Yet there (and in Maine, and in Ohio) they're building new toll booths in order to give the perception that they are forcing people to pay tolls (there's really no difference between driving through an AET and an ORT without a valid transponder; in both cases you get a photo taken and get a bill in the mail). The Maine Turnpike director said that if they got rid of cash, they would have to double the cash toll in order to make up for lost revenue. Which makes exactly zero sense, especially since 70% of tolls are already paid by transponder. But Maine is out there building new, $40 million toll booths (1/3 of the cost of removing toll collection from the entire Turnpike in Massachusetts) and then paying more to operate it.

On the Turnpike, leakage accounts for about 5% of tolls ($122 million over 6 years, versus about $400 million in annual revenue) and the state has been dragging its feet on collecting on a lot of that, mostly since revenues increased on the Turnpike so they were kind of fine with it (which is infuriating logic in its own right). But imagine if the T went out and said "yeah, we're fine with not collecting 5% of fare revenue like the Turnpike does." That is what not collecting bus fares would do.

One more thing: If you skip out on tolls in Massachusetts, you can't renew your license or registration until you pay them. They have reciprocity agreements with most of New England, plus New York. They should probably have reciprocity with the rest of the EZPass states (basically everyone south to Virginia and west to Illinois) and work with Connecticut and Vermont (call up the DOT and say "give us reciprocity and we'll cut you a check for 5% of what we get from scofflaws" or something). 41% of unpaid tolls are from out of state. Meanwhile, if bus fares weren't collected, 50% of bus-fare-only riders are low income and 50% are people of color. So while non-toll-payers are often people from out-of-state who can likely afford the toll, the people who would not be paying bus fares nearly all low-income residents who could use that $1.70

TL;DR: the T should go to the Turnpike people at 10 Park Plaza and ask them how AET has gone even if there are some people who are skipping out on tolls.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

I don’t even ride the T more than a couple of times a month, and I’d be delighted to pay enough more in taxes that everyone could have free public transportation. Because I believe that we should have nice things, including great infrastructure, and I’m willing to pay for it.

If it is the Medford Public Library, it would likely have been named for Charlotte Bloomberg regardless of her son's fate or fortune or investment. The woman was the freaking soul of that library for decades, and part of the building committee for the former building.

Had occasional free time slots that you could find codes for in Bay Windows or the Phoenix. No hacking necessary hehe

because every so often I'd see a vintage error message, so, sadly this doesn't surprise me :-(

the MBTA is using Access as its database.

I wonder if the kids tried setting the card values to over $32768 (or over $65536) to see what would happen.

Much like they did to the previous token and card system that was built IN THE 1960s.

The token system goes back to when fares were 15¢ in 1950ish (before that it was a nickel or dime and the turnstiles just accepted those). When fares were a quarter, turnstiles accepted quarters. When Dime Time was a thing (midday discounts) they didn't reconfigure turnstiles, dimes were just accepted at fare boxes.

The first passes were created for select employers in 1974 (now relying on Boston in Transit) for annual travel, and they were made available to the general public in 1978. These were "flash passes" and shown to operators or fare collectors (except for the Berkeley entrance at Arlington, where mag stripe readers were installed, since John Hancock was an early adopter). Magnetic stripes came in the early 1980s but it wasn't until the early 1990s that magnetic fare boxes became standard. (At least one of the old mechanical fare boxes was fashioned into a lamp and given to Fred Salvucci.)

But the cards started in the 1960s and weren't fully integrated until about 1990. That system was fully replaced in 2006. So, yes, it's time for a new one.