Where’s the traffic?

In all fairness – I’m not sure that Orca can/should bill any customer more than they originally agreed to. I’ve run into a lot of customers that have had this issue, and they now plop in their extra quarter, apparently having been told that they can’t change their pass value until next month (which is annoying at the least).

I do think that customers deserve at least some of the responsibility for knowing fares were going up, and not checking to make sure they were purchasing a pass for the correct fare.

And yeah – the entire e-commerce functions on the Orca site are horrific. I recently lost my wallet and was unable to cancel an autoload pending transaction (because I’d cancelled my card) without calling customer service first – and was unable to change to a new card until I’d done this.

And, of course, there is no simple “Upgrade pass” button on the ORCA website. You have to cancel the existing autoload, hunt around the ORCA website to find out how to buy a new pass, re-enter all your billing info, then setup autoload again. It constantly amazes me how horribly implemented this whole thing is.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkT2iLetCTc

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxC_a7qnGi8

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBNfauF6IHc

Start with part 3. Would it have worked? Maybe, maybe not. But they were definitely thinking about the impacts of the automobile and how to mitigate them. At the end of part 2 they talk about how the pedestrian is king in downtown. That’s pretty progressive for the 1960s.

In fact, the persistent belief in the vision described in this video that is used as a central argument by the anti-transit crowd. We don’t need to build light rail to solve global warming because the electric car will solve all those problems. We don’t need light rail to solve congestion because the automated highway will increase capacity. Density = crowded and unpleasant, sprawl = spacious and comfortable, walking bad, cars good. There is no doubt that these ideas are dead, but they still hold our planning and public spending hostage and prevent the emergence of a new paradigm. For all the criticism I have of this blog, and I have no shortage of it, on balance it provides an invaluable service in refuting the dead ideas displayed in this video (that still persist today).

The video is powerful because it is visionary. Whatever criticism you can level at it, the video paints a compelling picture of what the world will be like. It is that image that still holds sway over the auto-boosters and is the bane of transit advocates everywhere. The only way to fight vision is with vision. Transit advocates need to create an alternative vision, not focus on criticism of this vision or the status quo, but a compelling, bold vision of how the world could be if it were build around transit oriented principles.

I’ve tagged in at King Street and not tagged out at Kent or Auburn dozens of times a month since summer, and never had any balance show up on my card.

No idea if Link will work the same or not.