One Fare Card to Rule Them All

The Globe tells us this morning us that soon, soon, the T will be fully converted to automated fare cards, a la New York (but hopefully without any crippling strikes). CharlieTicket [sic], as the card is known (the MBTA, ever hip to the latest typographical trends, eschewed the space between two words but preserved the capitalization of the second word), will allow free transfers from bus to subway, T top dog Dan Grabauskas promises, though no word on whether that will work in reverse (why wouldn't it, you ask? Because it's the T). Also, there appears nary a suggestion (that Bostonist can find, anyway) that the CharlieTicket might be used to allow a transfer from the red to the blue lines, which are achingly close but require riders to take a third line one stop for a connection. Our step-father-in-law, who lives along the Silver Line in the South End, reports that the implementation of CharlieTicket has slowed things down considerably on that already slow T line bus, but Grabauskas swears that won't last. Grabauskas also claims the use of the fare card will cut down on turnstile-jumping (though we're not sure exactly how). Bostonist wonders, though, whether he's considered the other types of illicit behavior that might arise: We recall from our days as a Brooklynist that the introduction of the MetroCard in New York spawned a cottage industry of people who purchased unlimited ride cards then hung around the station selling discounted fares (see #4). The city quickly figured this out and put a 17-minute time limit between uses of the unlimited cards, but that just encouraged people to buy multiple cards and rotate them. Bostonist looks forward to seeing how local entrepreneurs will take on the system.

Photo courtesy of boston.com