Why does Governor Charlie make it so hard to get a Charlie Card ? Charlie Cards are great for the MBTA. Passengers pay in advance. The T gets a free loan from all the passengers or a float.
So why would are these cards so hard to get? why not hand them out at every station ?
Please share widely!
Why can’t you use them on the commuter rail? Annoying.
That’s how I got mine. I was also surprised to find a few weeks ago that a couple of my Charlie Cards had expired. Why shouldn’t they continue to be usable as long as you continue to load them?
On a related matter, getting or renewing a Senior Card for the T is only possible in very inaccessible locations – the Downtown Crossing concourse and Back Bay Station at last report. (updates welcome).
I got my original at a suburban senior center, but that was for one afternoon only and I was lucky to find out about it. The place was mobbed, one out of two cameras for photo ID’s did not arrive, and many people left empty-handed in disgust.
I got mine last week at Downtown Crossing. The wait was over a half hour.
It wasn’t any easier before Governor Charlie either. I also had to go to Downtown Crossing to get one, but luckily there was no wait.
The should have them at every T station.
What does this have to do with Governor Charlie?
it’s another slow news day?
So blindly backing a center-right Republican to thwart a center-right “Democratic” legislature makes sense again, how?
I supported Baker not because he would “oppose the legislature” but because he was not Attorney General Police State. If the “liberal” Democratic Party nominates AG Police State again, I would happily vote for the Republican, whomever it might be. Swift, Romney, Weld, Brooke (even though he is dead), the guy with the “Thanks Obama” and NRA bumper stickers who just cut me off in traffic.
If the so called “liberals” cannot bring themselves to oppose a right-wing legislature in early November, when it actually matters, then there is no opposition to that legislature, as has been obvious for the last 20 years.
I share your contempt for the last “Democratic” nominee. If you oppose the continuation of our police state, then Charlie Baker was no alternative. None of the people who ran, or whom you mentioned, offered to do or did ANYTHING constructive about public transportation
We who want effective, responsive, and responsible government must insist that our candidates reflect those values. Neither Charlie Baker nor the majority of the current legislature meet that minimal standard.
Voting for Charlie Baker because our legislature sucks is not going to solve our problem.
Some people might vote for that reason–certainly every GOP candidate always makes that pitch. My vote was for the person I viewed as the best of the available choices to be governor, and I have no regrets.
For what it’s worth I voted Republican for nearly every state office other than Governor in Illinois this November since our state Democrats make Massachusetts Democrats look like Jimmy Stewart. I voted for a conservative Republican nominee for Attorney General since he wasn’t the daughter of the corrupt speaker unlike the incumbent with a D next to her name and moderate Republicans for State Rep since the incumbent was another vote for Mike Madigan.
Most voters didn’t think this way, they voted for Rauner and voted for their local Dem reps bringing us gridlock and insolvency. Much like MA. The GOP actually nominated a moderate social liberal against Jim Miceli and the same folks that overwhelmingly backed Baker in his district sent him back to Beacon Hill. Just as the dummies did in IL.
I appreciate your voice around here though, it confirms my theory that unenrolled voters would respond to real progressive candidates and that reforming the House is way more important than trying to change the deck chairs on the Titanic every four years in the Corner Office. This thread is a classic example of progressives taking their eye of the ball. Baker isn’t part of the solution, but he definitely isn’t part of the real problem either.
…is a good political fit for his district and gets high marks for constituent service.
and his opponent was a not all that well liked former selectman.
Republicans can have good constituent services as well. They are, after all, politicians. But having guys like that in the MA Democratic Party makes it seem like the only real principle that the MA Democratic Party has is to maintain the power of the MA Democratic Party.
would be a great before-and-after in Wheel of Fortune.
“A bumbling Massachusetts executive uses cashless payment to take the Green line.”
For a while they handed out an unlimited number at every station. Then they cut back to only having a small number at each station every day. When I asked why they didn’t have more, I was told that people were hoarding them and it was getting too expensive to make so many cards that were never being used, so they started limiting how many they handed out at most stations. That was about a year after we started using them.
If people are hoarding them (and is that even true?) then simply charge a dollar or two to offset the cost. What’s the bid deal?
I’ve got a half dozen in my desk drawer, each with $1 – $10 on them. I do that because when family comes to visit, it’s far easier on me and on them if I pre-load each card with enough, and hand them out to my family members. This way they don’t have to worry about interacting with the fare machine in any way — just tap and go.
hrs-kevin is right though — if I had to pay $1 each for them, I’d probably own 3-4 instead of 6, and gladly pay the $1. Another option: charge $5 for them — and have them come with $5 of fare preloaded.
I load them up with 5 bucks and hand them out, usually to drunk locals in Faneuil Hall. Shoot this isn’t difficult, the Home Depot debit card I bought for my dad (from CVS) came with a $5 fee. Just pass the cost off to the consumer guys …
My backpack was stolen in 2014. When I tried to replace my card I was told to go to Downtown Crossing. They told me something similar. Too many cards were given out that were not used.
Today, I was loading a card at Riverside and a Red Sox fan asked for help. I suggested that he use a Charlie Ticket and a credit card. I never use cash when loading my card. A T employee said that he could get a card at the station. I was skeptical of what the employee said and he insisted that on game days they had them to give out. I was leaving and couldn’t verify this. I checked online and there are seventeen stations where they claim you can get them during specified hours. As I mentioned, I was sent to Downtown Crossing, but I was headed there anyway.
While it is true that
it is not obvious to me that
from a revenue perspective. After all, Charlie Cards result in lower ride fares than Charlie Tickets or cash, and allow free or discounted transfers.
I’m not arguing against distributing the Charlie Card more widely — any rider with any regularity should have one, and as a Green Line rider, let me add that weekly pass tickets are the bane of my “could I please get on and not stand behind the ziip zip ziiip zip zip zop zip of a rider trying to slide in his paper weeokly ticket. There’s no doubt that there is a higher quality of service attributable to the Charlie Cards — gates open and close more quickly, letting people get in stations (and on buses and trolleys) faster. But — that doesn’t necessarily make it great for the MBTA, who loses cash money with every use of the Card instead of the ticket.
P.S. If you are an occassional rider of the T and have a Charlie Card, the fare machines are great places to unload your (non-penny) pocket change. Be it five cents or a dwollah fohty five, you just top up your card with it so the coins don’t end up in a milk jug next to your nightstand.
Most cities that have gone to contactless payment systems dispense the cards from a machine. London has gone all contactless and you need to buy an OysterCard and top it up. I don’t remember if there’s a cost per card, but I’ll say every time I go to London now the liens move much faster at rush hour because everyone is on contactless.
Atlanta is contactless only when I visited my Uncle last Christmas.
DC lets you buy them from a machine. You can still get paper tickets, but I think they’re trying to move away from them.
I think it is pretty clear that they really don’t want to make it easy for people to get Charlie Cards. If everyone could get cards easily they would lose revenue given their current fee schedule.
Really they would be much better off if they could figure out how to entirely eliminate the tickets. The ticket readers are far, far more likely to jam and malfunction than the card readers. As a commuter rail pass holder, which uses the ticket format, I have to keep track of which readers are operating properly or else risk having the magnetic strip get ruined by a bad reader.
I thought the title was “Why does Governor Charlie make it so hard to get a Charlie Card?”
Was the title updated?