5 ms·

I got a ticket once for not turning my wheels on 2nd between Townsend and Brannan. The law is your wheels must be turned if the grade is greater than 3%. The gr

by edge17 11y ago

I got a ticket once for not turning my wheels on 2nd between Townsend and Brannan. The law is your wheels must be turned if the grade is greater than 3%. The grade, according to the department of public works, is 3.09% (http://bsm.sfdpw.org/subdmap/subd/Key_Maps/319_gm.tif http://bsm.sfdpw.org/subdmap/subd/Key_Maps/319_gm.tif). Next time I'll bring my protractor. the MTA is too lazy to do a lot of things. They employ antiquated technology and pass the cost of their own inefficiency to the consumer in every place they can. -Adding money to a Clipper Card from the website takes several days before the credit can be used. Apparently this has to do with the specific scanning hardware they have on the buses and some legacy Translink interoperability issues or something. -Many of the parking kiosks interface are confusing (I once tried helping a lady only to find out she'd put in $20 because she kept not understanding she had paid). -Fare-checkers are extremely self-righteous and rude. I once got off the back door of a Muni train because I'd realized my Clipper card was empty. On the way to the front door to pay in cash, the fare-checker told me he was going to write me a ticket because I got on and off the bus and that, despite my honest intention to pay the fare, he was going to write me up. -Towing is $600, which includes $250some in SF admin fees, $250 is towing, and other other fees the towing company can freely tack on to work around the maximum "towing" fee that the city allows (in my case, a Flatbed Truck fee of $80). -If you car gets stolen, and the police find it you get a 30 minute "courtesy" window to get to your car before they tow your car and you pay $500-$600 to get it out of the impound. A friend that works for the city was telling me that the MTA has a lot of inefficiencies because they have humans in the process every step of the way and no incentive to change that. When they need to modify the process, they just add another human and another fee.

dsl 11y ago
The "fare enforcement" folks are not police, they cannot legally detain you and you are under no obligation to answer their questions. Just like the security guard at the front of Best Buy who wants to check your receipt, you can say "no thank you" and continue on. However if you give them your ID or information to write a ticket, it is binding.
- branchan 11y ago
  Careful with this advice since cops are normally around when they check the fares.
deathanatos 11y ago
> -Adding money to a Clipper Card from the website takes several days before the credit can be used. Apparently this has to do with the specific scanning hardware they have on the buses and some legacy Translink interoperability issues or something. …except that Walgreens is able to make adding value happen instantly… somehow.
- jedc 11y ago
  Probably because they have "the specific scanning hardware" mentioned?
  - deathanatos 11y ago
    If it's the case that Walgreens has "the specific scanning hardware" (note that the parent to my comment had that hardware on a bus), then that's exactly my point. I don't ride the buses; I take CalTrain. There's three pieces of hardware of concern here: the scanner that checks your pass, the Clipper website, and whatever Walgreens uses. The scanners take a week to pick up payments through Clipper (first party), and instantly from Walgreens (third party). I find it exceptionally odd (and mightily inconvenient) that a third-party is able to add value into the system faster than the owners of the system themselves. (edit: and see the sibling response to yours from jcrawfordor for more info!)
- jcrawfordor 11y ago
  The cards are stored-value - meaning that the card actually stores how much money it is worth. For cost saving and legacy reasons, most Clipper readers are offline and simply read and update the card value. When you add value online, there is no way for the service to write to your card, so instead Clipper terminals throughout the system are informed of the value add and apply it next time they interact with your card. Online terminals, e.g. most vending machines, frequently synchronize with the online service and can transfer value added online almost immediately. Offline readers like those on buses, though, obtain a batched list of online value adds from time to time, often in the bus yard overnight via short range wireless networking - but in some areas this may happen less frequently than once a day. For Muni, I believe it should always happen overnight. When you add value at Walgreen's, they set your card on a terminal that updates it directly. This limitation is common to all stored value systems with offline terminals, including all Cubic transit card systems such as Clipper, Oyster, SmarTrip, etc. It's a compromise involved in rolling such a system out to a vehicle network without the expense of long range radio networking in every terminal - these systems were designed and implemented well before this was practical.

by edge17 11y ago

dsl 11y ago

The "fare enforcement" folks are not police, they cannot legally detain you and you are under no obligation to answer their questions. Just like the security guard at the front of Best Buy who wants to check your receipt, you can say "no thank you" and continue on. However if you give them your ID or information to write a ticket, it is binding.

branchan 11y ago
Careful with this advice since cops are normally around when they check the fares.

deathanatos 11y ago

> -Adding money to a Clipper Card from the website takes several days before the credit can be used. Apparently this has to do with the specific scanning hardware they have on the buses and some legacy Translink interoperability issues or something. …except that Walgreens is able to make adding value happen instantly… somehow.

jedc 11y ago
Probably because they have "the specific scanning hardware" mentioned?
- deathanatos 11y ago
  If it's the case that Walgreens has "the specific scanning hardware" (note that the parent to my comment had that hardware on a bus), then that's exactly my point. I don't ride the buses; I take CalTrain. There's three pieces of hardware of concern here: the scanner that checks your pass, the Clipper website, and whatever Walgreens uses. The scanners take a week to pick up payments through Clipper (first party), and instantly from Walgreens (third party). I find it exceptionally odd (and mightily inconvenient) that a third-party is able to add value into the system faster than the owners of the system themselves. (edit: and see the sibling response to yours from jcrawfordor for more info!)
jcrawfordor 11y ago
The cards are stored-value - meaning that the card actually stores how much money it is worth. For cost saving and legacy reasons, most Clipper readers are offline and simply read and update the card value. When you add value online, there is no way for the service to write to your card, so instead Clipper terminals throughout the system are informed of the value add and apply it next time they interact with your card. Online terminals, e.g. most vending machines, frequently synchronize with the online service and can transfer value added online almost immediately. Offline readers like those on buses, though, obtain a batched list of online value adds from time to time, often in the bus yard overnight via short range wireless networking - but in some areas this may happen less frequently than once a day. For Muni, I believe it should always happen overnight. When you add value at Walgreen's, they set your card on a terminal that updates it directly. This limitation is common to all stored value systems with offline terminals, including all Cubic transit card systems such as Clipper, Oyster, SmarTrip, etc. It's a compromise involved in rolling such a system out to a vehicle network without the expense of long range radio networking in every terminal - these systems were designed and implemented well before this was practical.