Friday, October 06, 2006

T fare rollback. I was almost right!

Well, the T has adjusted the proposed fare increases:

Subway and trolley rides would go from $1.25 to $1.70, bus fares from 90 cents to $1.25, and most commuter rail passes would cost 22 percent more.

Riders who pay cash or use automated fare CharlieTickets instead of CharlieCards, which will become available next month, would have to fork over 25 cents more to ride buses and 30 cents more to ride subways and trolleys. Under the original proposal issued in April, the surcharge would have been 40 cents for bus and 55 cents for subways and trolleys.


I came close to calling it a few months ago:

If I had to make a guess, the T will offer transfer to CharlieTicket riders and keep the increase at $1.70, instead of retreating on the final increase amount itself.


I suppose that's a good impetus to get people using the credit card style Charlie Cards, but still, it soaks the casual T user who has no idea there's a caste system for fares.

I live next to Wonderland. As a terminus, it attacts a lot of casual users coming to Boston from the North Shore every weekend. Now I get to deal with irate dads, confused old people, and stupid teenagers from Swampscott clogging up the Charlie pass machines, trying to figure out why their fare costs more than everyone else's. Awesome.

2 comments:

Gienna said...

Hey!

The teenagers from Swampscott are no more stupid than the teenagers from anywhere else!

Berto said...

Are you for serious?