According to this post on light rail on Good Magazine’s blog, Manhattan residents first voted to fund the Second Avenue Subway in 1951. They even mention East Link!
Seven weeks and two days until Central Link, and seven years and (okay, maybe) two months until University Link…
I clicked around GOOD and found this neat graphic comparing daily ridership and system track length of several rail systems in the U.S. and abroad. Tokyo has an astonishing amount of riders for a small but dense network whereas the opposite is true for New York City.
That is a particularly good issue of Good – everyone interested in transport should scurry around and find a copy.
And… Has anyone else noticed a marked increase in ORCA reader failures in the last 10 days? I read the KCMetro 3600 series low floors mostly (on the #11) and have had 4 free rides in the last 2 weeks. Nice gesture, but Metro needs my money!
Not even at the point of an orca reader failure yet. After 6 days, my “e-purse” is still pending the charge. The transaction does show on the credit card though. Hopefully this is not what’s meant by “approximately 24 hours”…
jcdk – my card did the same thing when I first loaded the e-purse. After a day or two of waiting I emailed ORCA support and they told me that when I attempt to use the card, the e-purse transaction will finalize. So, I did that and it worked fine. I wish they would say this on the ORCA website!
Thanks, Kevin. I’ll give that a try.
I just got my ORCA not much more than 10 days ago, so I can’t comment on the increase but I can say there’s been several occasions where my card won’t read. Today a driver yelled at me because the reader said I still needed to pay a cash fare (can’t read the screen so how would I know?) That makes absolutely no sense. There’s $10 on my card. I THINK (again can’t read the screen so I don’t always know) I’m running at about an 80 percent success rate, though.
Speaking of not being able to read the screen, I just got back froma trip to Amsterdam where they are also in the process of rolling out their own smart card. Since they are currently in dual use mode (accepting both the smart card and the older self validated strippenkart, many of the card gates at the transit stations are open for strippenkart users to pass through. I approached such a gate with my smart card (which has €1.05 on it, more than enough for my €.85 trip), and tapped the reader, it beeped, and said something in Dutch (which I can’t read), but the readers always beep and say something, so this seemed no different from the previous trips I’d taken. The gate was open so I walked through. When I got to the end of my route I tapped again to exit, and the gate opened for me. This time the reader showed my charge and amount left on my card: -€2.95 – yes, that was anegative number. Apparently the first reader had given me an error that it didn’t read, and the second reader charged me a €4 penatly for not having tapped in to the system in the first place. Since these cards are anonymous (un registered), and a new card costs €3 anyway, I figured it was a wash, but still thought it odd that it would record a negative amount onto an anonymous card.
That type of thing is my biggest concern with ORCA. I am legally blind and can’t ever read the screen. I try to gauge whether or not it worked by the beeps (if it beeps a trillion times it didn’t read right….I think) but that doesn’t always work (only beeped twice yesterday) and when I tap it and walk off, drivers get pissed. Oh well. Not much I can do about it.
I have that whole issue of GOOD. It’s got some great stories and graphics about many sides of transportation.