Good Morning CharlieCard

The MBTA released the wrath of Charlie on the system for real today. December 4 marked the release of the long-promised plastic cards embedded with a chip to allow you to tap and go, rather than feed, wait, retreat with the paper CharlieTicket. They've got boxes full of zero-value CharlieCards to distribute, reportedly about a million before the end of the year, and are starting the effort with a full on blitz in T stations all week. T employees will be handing out the cards to riders at all the T stops and a small selection of bus hubs over the next week. We're still trying to figure out where the T will be sending the CharlieTruck. We grabbed a card underground this morning and dropped $5 on it. The process took 47 seconds – and that's with verification the funds transferred to the card. Just as fast as holding up four fingers and passing a five under the glass at a token booth. Oh, and just in case you thought it was all good news – one of CharlieVendingMachines was being serviced. Hopefully they'll be in better repair than the escalators on the T.

Below watch a shaky video of Bostonist adding $5 to a CharlieCard, and making sure it's there. Think of it as instructional if you're nervous. We had to explain to the T employee watching over us that we weren't taking pictures for terrorist plots, but capturing video that we could share with the world on the Internets. Coming soon – a soundtrack and title screen (apologies for the camera tilting).