Comments on: Fares, Transfer Policies to Change Jan. 1

By: bandsxbands

bandsxbands — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:00:35 +0000

My friend and I were recently talking about how technology has become so integrated in our day to day lives. Reading this post makes me think back to that debate we had, and just how inseparable from electronics we have all become.

I don’t mean this in a bad way, of course! Ethical concerns aside… I just hope that as technology further develops, the possibility of uploading our brains onto a digital medium becomes a true reality. It’s a fantasy that I dream about almost every day.

(Posted on Nintendo DS running R4i SDHC DS HomeBrow)

By: joshuadf

joshuadf — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:56:13 +0000

Food stamps also come on a Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card now. We short-term hosted a refugee who found the cards confusing but figured it out (they had cards in Iraq but she had always used cash).

ORCA is new and confusing but no more so than the EBT cards.

By: geekgirl

geekgirl — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:22:15 +0000

You can try the UW bookstore; they usually sell a couple types of clear plastic ID holders that can be used as a lanyard or attached to a keychain. They’re popular with students since it’s not advisable to put a hole in our Husky Cards either. This is because of the magnetic strip for the Husky Card Account, not because they have ORCA. Sometime at the end of the year they’re supposed to change over. And having seen that picture, I’m really curious as to how you’d design electronics so as to put the RFID technology and the magnetic strip technology in a single card and have them both work without any interference. It’ll be interested

By: Chris Stefan

Chris Stefan — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:01:05 +0000

BTW it is $10 up-front to get ORCA (and only $5 until February 1st).

I’m sorry but I just don’t see this as a huge burden, even for those right on the margins. I know from personal experience that most people who are poor can find $10 to spend on things they find important.

By: Maddles

Maddles — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:30:43 +0000

I’d like to point out to Ben Schiendelman that in order to qualify for food stamps, a family of three needs to have an income falling below the poverty threshold, which sits at $18,310. Now imagine that you are a single mother making $19,000/year, which disqualifies you for food stamps. Say you pay $600 to rent a two-bedroom apartment, and $650/month for childcare for your toddler (this is roughly the average cost). Subtract these two expenses from your monthly income of $1583.33, and that’s $333.33 left over every month. Now say you live in North Pierce County, but work in Seattle, and rely on a combination of Metro and Sound Transit. Z is absolutely right. $40 up front would hurt, badly.

Before you say, “Why doesn’t she get a job closer to home?” consider that she may feel underqualified, she may not have the internet access or computer literacy skills necessary to access job listings, and she may not feel she can take the time off to schedule interviews that may or may not lead to employment.

Also keep in mind that moving closer to the city could be an inviable option for her as well, given higher rental rates and deposit/first/last costs.

The immediate implementation of the new system is highly, highly biased and discriminatory.

By: New All-Day Pass - Seattle Transit Blog

New All-Day Pass - Seattle Transit Blog — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:01:14 +0000

[...] another fare medium out there that I managed to miss the last time I tried to explain it. The Metro Day Pass, which is sold by drivers only on weekends and holidays and costs $4.50. It [...]

By: Last Week’s Highlights - Seattle Transit Blog

Last Week’s Highlights - Seattle Transit Blog — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:02:07 +0000

[...] recap on how fares and transfer policies changed on January 1, which may be too late for some of [...]

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:02:26 +0000

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. The checks we get aren’t individually made out. They have a big file folder of pre-printed checks in strange denominations, and give employees some combination of these checks to equal that employee’s subsidy. (The file folder is covered with notes of different combinations that add up to different subsidy amounts. They don’t have any combination that adds up to my subsidy amount, so they try to go a dollar over one month, a dollar under the next.)

But there’s no system of tracking who got how much, and it doesn’t tie in to payroll or provide any sort of a paper trail for the employer.

The checks aren’t from the company, they’re a special transit subsidy check that the company gets in bulk.

By: Z

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 02:39:45 +0000

I boarded close to 4:30 and the trip terminates at 6:38 so it shouldent have been, unless the system was mis-configured. Of course it did slow boarding down some however it helps with the fare evasion problem which i hear is quite severe on the 59x series during the off peak. Prehaps its time to eiliminate the RFA entirely, and make LINK “Free” within the confines of the DSTT similar to portland. Of course you would have to adjust stops some to account for slower boarding, which sometimes might not be a bad thing.

By: Jeff Welch

Jeff Welch — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 02:19:32 +0000

on the 594 the operator was collecting fares as you entered within the RFA

Another Orca flaw – it isn’t set to the times of the RFA, but by the “trip”. Hence, if most of the times on a trip are outside the RFA time (i.e 7pm), then it collects a fare during all of that trip – unless the driver over-rides and manually sets collection to “Ride Free”. Hence, if you board at 6:45 (still Ride Free time), you’ll pay a fare if the driver merely changed their trip and didn’t manually override to set the RFA.

By: Z

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 02:02:03 +0000

You are correct, its from 2 hours from the moment you tag on. I beileive the same applies to LINK and Sounder as well. You would be out some of your transfer time if your vehicle was late in arriving. Also today i noted some intresting things in my travels. I went to go add e-purse value to my ORCA at a TVM, and 2 of them were not functioning properly (were locked up with an error about timing out on the screen), however the 2 at SoDo station were functional. Paying in cash it did not give me a reciept for it either, and was slow at programming my card. Also riding home today on the 594 the operator was collecting fares as you entered within the RFA, while the RFA was still in effect (by all published information i could find on the matter. It got some groveling by the passengers, of course if you used your e-purse you were automatically out the 35+ minutes of your transfer time right there).

By: joshuadf

joshuadf — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:03:38 +0000

Yeah it does, it’s just not useful: “KCM, KCM-BUS-4196″. The DSTT is better: “SOT, INTERNATIONAL DIST.”

By: Kaleci

Kaleci — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:55:04 +0000

From what I have seen on my ORCA card, my transaction history does not say the location where I get on the bus. It does say which bus I board, but not where.

By: Jeff Welch

Jeff Welch — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:18:08 +0000

A MAJOR downside on Orca transfers vs. paper transfers as yet not fully explored.

With a paper transfer, your transfer is good for 2 hours from either the central CBD or outbound terminal if you’re on a route that doesn’t go through the CBD. So long as you BOARD by the time your transfer expires – it’s good for the entire 2nd bus ride.

Hence – if you board the #10 on Capitol Hill after a hard day at Group Health, pay your fare in cash and get a transfer good for 1:59 from that bus’s arrival downtown – you have plenty of time to transfer to the 218 to the Issaquah highlands. Hit bad traffic on I-90? No problem, you got on the bus before your transfer expired – it’s still good as a paid fare when you get off the bus at 6:15pm, even though it was cut to expire at 5:30.

Not so with an Orca card issued e-transfer.

Orca transfers are good for 2 hours from the time your fare was paid. So – board the #10 at 15th and John, hit traffic on Pine Street into town, and the 218 runs late because of a pileup on I-90 – you wind up paying a second, full, 2-zone fare when you get off the bus in Issaquah.

MAJOR inequity there.

Orca incompetence in answering questions about this kind of issue is piling on. Recently someone posted this exact scenario on the King County News blog in a post entitled “Got Questions About the New Orca Card? We’ve Got Answers!” http://kingcountynews.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/got-questions-about-the-new-orca-card-weve-got-answers/

Rather than answering the user’s question – Linda Thielke came on with a post referring people to a non-existent “Q&A” and a recommendation to call customer service to get the question answered.

Pretty pathetic, really.

By: Z

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:31:47 +0000

A better way to handle the employer/employee pass situation, IMO is to either freely issue or “sell” the card to the employee, with the employer recording the serial number. than through use of an automated process they could load the next month’s puget pass, or e-purse value onto the card automatically. Of course upon termination they would have to revoke the pass in the computer, which would trigger the system upon next “tap” to remove atleast the pass in question, or simply let it expire and not renew. the employee would keep “his” card, and anything he loaded onto it. Employer could not access the transaction details unless a formal request was made to ST/ORCA.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:11:06 +0000

Our company got a pile of “blank” ORCA cards. All we had to do was fill out a company request form and tell them how much to deduct per month for a pass or ePurse account. They give us a card and record the serial number. Our payroll is set up to move money from our paycheck pre-tax which would help you guys since 50% is still paid by you. Every month they send in a check for the entire amount of everybody’s ORCA card (some people buy passes, other like me just do ePurse). It works great and still preserves the paper check trail. There’s actually some pretty good reasons for doing it “the old fashion way” with printed checks and a signiture. The added work for your HR would I think be more than offset by only having to write one check per month.

By: josh

josh — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:56:32 +0000

I would suggest not punching the card, I know someone who has wrecked three cards trying that.

A definite design flaw in the system, seems to have been designed by someone who never rode transit.

You can put the card in a pouch of some sort, or epoxy a strap to the outside surface of the card so it doesn’t interfere with the circuitry.

By: josh

josh — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:52:46 +0000

My employer is stuck solidly in the age of paper, so our transit subsidy comes in the form of paper checks — employees go down to HR each month, get their checks, payable to any transit fare sales outlet, then take the checks to wherever they buy their transit pass. The company pays 50%, employees make up the difference with cash, credit card, or personal check.

This may seem entirely stone age, but it’s been working for ages.

This month, when I went to get my checks, the transit coordinator asked my opinion of the upcoming switch to ORCA. I said I’d been switched back in the summer since I use a PugetPass. She was thrilled to hear it, since her contact at Metro had said the paper checks couldn’t be used for PugetPass on ORCA. She had never seen the mail-order form for ORCA card orders.

We’re not the biggest company in the county, only around 800 employees in King County, and I don’t know how many companies still use the old paper check system, so maybe this is an insignificant blip in the numbers. But wouldn’t it have made sense to send the company a few dozen ORCA mail-order forms in advance of the change-over? Or even send out a dozen no-value ORCA cards so employees could add value without having to wait for a card to come in the mail?

By: Spokker

Spokker — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:51:03 +0000

[deleted, ad-hominem]

By: Spokker

Spokker — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:48:05 +0000

In Japan they have the SUICA card, but you can still use paper tickets and passes. One ticket should get you where you need to go in most cases. Different agencies should cooperate with each other so that taking transit is as simple an affair as possible.

These “tap” cards are overrated anyway.