Sneak peek: ticket printers on buses coming this summer
Trimess
Saturday, March 2, 2013
You know this will be a freaking nightmare
Sneak peek: ticket printers on buses coming this summer
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Sneak peek: ticket printers on buses coming this summer
5 comments:
Here's a big (theoretical) difference . . . The ticket printers come in every night. If there's a problem with a printer they ought to be able to deal with it easily when the vehicle is off the schedule. Not so much for MAX ticket machines.
Then again, I offered the same logic to them for having ticket machines on MAX trains.
And of course, the difference is theoretical if they don't maintain the staff to actually fix the printers.
I'm on Al's side here (as usual)...
With 200 buses per garage all needing maintenance in an eight hour window, with having to do all the other crap that goes on each night - is TriMet going to keep a bus in the garage because the night maintenance didn't have the time to fix the broken printer? It's bad enough there are not enough buses as it is to maintain a regular daily schedule...
On MAX there is a dedicated group of employees whose job is nothing but TVM maintenance. Nothing else - not broken headsigns, headlights, cleaning up bodily fluids, fixing the ADA ramp...
I wonder how much these ticket printers are costing TriMet - and why TriMet isn't following virtually every other major agency and going to stored value cards (i.e. ORCA, TAP, MetroCard, Oyster, Clipper)... Those cards would entirely eliminate transfers (because if you pay a cash fare your fare is per boarding)...it'd also do a lot better job of tracking who is riding what and where, instead of TriMet's current guesstimation system that relies on easily fallible infrared "counters" (that don't work on a standing room only bus, if someone is forced to stand underneath the counter!)
It's cute how people think this is actually even going to happen by this summer. Did you see how the mobile tickets, originally supposed to come out early Spring 2013, are now coming Summer 2013? And all the buses on the road are going to have cameras by the end of 2012? Proud 62 riders represent, our 1700s & 1800s still don't have cameras.
My guess is they'll get some of these printers on the 3000s, the rest of us won't see them for another year or two, which is nice because at that time maybe all the bugs will be worked out. Or not.
is TriMet going to keep a bus in the garage
What's wrong with keeping today's transfers as a backup?
not enough buses as it is to maintain a regular daily schedule
Where have you read that?
why TriMet isn't following virtually every other major agency and going to stored value cards
Because TriMet doesn't want to sink a ton of money into something that's proprietary and may become obsolete (like the MetroCard). Instead they are working the next generation, which is open and in which TriMet wouldn't have to pay transaction costs.
would entirely eliminate transfers
TriMet may not want to penalize riders who pay cash by eliminating paper transfers.
if someone is forced to stand underneath the counter
Why would someone be standing in the front doorway? Also, it's quite possible they've taken issues with the sensors into account when deriving numbers from them.
That being said, TriMet had ticket printers back in the 80's, and there were a lot of problems with them
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