15 ms·

The United States Needs a Universal System to Pay for Public Transit

56 points by stephencoyner 8y ago

z2 8y ago
NYC and Boston are also working on accepting contactless NFC payments through phones and credit cards that support it. Chicago already does, so it feels like we are headed there! Japan standardized to a countrywide compatible payment system years ago, though that seemed to be a technical nightmare as they appear to have merged a ton of existing local standards. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICCard_Connection_en.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICCard_Connection_en...
- monksy 8y ago
  Oh no those things are aweful. Those are meant for only strict pay per ride situations. (At least with the credit cards) Other things you have to consider: 1. Protected classes on the value (senior, students) 2. Wage benefit classes (that's where the fare is pretaxed) 3. Transfers Being a person that had his CC charged over his ventra card (which has a full monthly pass) this crap pisses me off.
  - z2 8y ago
    Ouch that's unfortunate and I can imagine the impossibility of a refund if the wrong card in a wallet of compatible cards is charged... I had a good experience with London's tube tracking my contactless CC usage properly though (full price fare, transfers, up to a daily max after x pounds).
    - monksy 8y ago
      So heres the thing.. I can't request a refund. To Ventra.. I presented a valid payment. I accepted service and recieved service. To the Credit card company, they're garbage. I can't opt out of a contactless card. I chewed out the CC CSR.. but they try to frame it as me being in a bad situation. ("That sounds like a terrible situation, I can understand how this can be frustrating in a big city") BTW: This is chase.
microcolonel 8y ago
I don't know that normal contactless cards (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, etc.) couldn't be used as-is. Tap on >> full charge. Tap off >> short trip refund. Here in southern Ontario, Metrolinx Presto cards work this way, and I don't see anything about them that can't be accomplished with standard contactless credit cards.
- esotericn 8y ago
  In London (UK) you just get charged the next day. No pre-charge. The chances of someone having a card that won't accept a ten quid charge is fairly minimal and TfL just ban cards that get declined.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    That's cool, why do people bother with Oyster then? I get it if you're trying to delegate it to a minor, but why do adults use something other than a credit card?
    - notahacker 8y ago
      Oyster came first, and is still useful for tourists and other people who for whatever reason don't have contactless cards. And you can have prepaid season tickets on Oyster cards, which works for a lot of commuters
    - frosted-flakes 8y ago
      Can you load a season/discounted fare pass on a credit card?
      - microcolonel 8y ago
        > Can you load a season/discounted fare pass on a credit card? When it comes to discounts, you can accomplish that by identifying the card as a discounted fare card. When it comes to a season pass, just identify the card then don't process a payment. As for the feasibility of this, I don't know, but there is almost certainly a viable mechanism for each of these things.
nofunsir 8y ago
Why? How? This would have to be a Federal program, and it doesn't fall under their purview to provide such a program. The States are all independent in this regard. For example, even though we all have Driver's Licenses, the 50 states have merely agreed to honor other DLs from other states.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > This would have to be a Federal program No it wouldn't, though that would be an option. Common standards for public services don't even necessarily require a formal direct agreement between all participants, much less a central mandate. > and it doesn't fall under their purview to provide such a program That's... debatable. Providing for post roads (which is an important use of most public roads) is an explicit federal mandate, and promoting efficiency in the shared uses of such roads is certainly closely-enough tied to the that function to be a legitimate pursuit as part of it; tying such a standard to, e.g., federal infrastructure funding is very hard to view as illegitimate.
  - nofunsir 8y ago
    Stretchy McStretchface. That's not even close to debatable. This (pork) is why we can't have nice things.
- gowld 8y ago
  "merely agreed" because it's required by the US Constitution
  - wtvanhest 8y ago
    is it? I wasn't aware that it was.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    The constitution requires that contracts be honored place to place, but not certifications or licenses. Legal and professional groups have different licenses in different states and don't cross honor. Teacher licenses are only good in one state, for example. Many states don't recognize concealed carry permits from states with less stringent licensing requirements.
corodra 8y ago
We need to decentralize all the things! One organization cannot have a hold on multiple organizations. We need to centralize all the things! One organization needs to unify all other organizations.
- viraptor 8y ago
  Cooperating doesn't mean centralised. Payment systems using common standard can be compatible and the payments distributed behind the scenes. You can still have a number of federated systems taking to each other without a central organisation.
ars 8y ago
After having tried it exclusively for 1 month, I absolutely loath public transport and would never use it if I had another choice. And I think it should be free for everyone. I would even support being taxed in order to expand it. (Improving it isn't possible IMO.) CMV: Roads are free, why shouldn't public transport be free? Being able to get around should be one of those services governments provide, and they should provide people with choices in how they prefer to get around. (Different people like different things, I hate public transport, but other people don't.)
- Helloworldboy 8y ago
  roads aren't free, they're paid for and (barely) maintained through our tax money
azeotropic 8y ago
We have this. It's called a Federal Reserve Note. You may have seen them before. CityLab is beyond parody. Yes, sure, the real problem with public transit is that jet-setting tourists have to install new apps on their iPhoneX in each city they visit.
- jchw 8y ago
  I haven't touched a physical dollar bill in multiple years.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    So? ATMs are everywhere. If you need to access transit in a pinch, you can just take out some cash. It's the universal fallback payment.
    - stephencoyner 8y ago
      Most transit systems do not provide any change. So if you go to an ATM and get $20, then break it for a $2.00 fare, you lose $18.00. That's not a solution.
      - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        I bought a train ticket the other day from a vending machine. You put in a $20 and it spits out a ticket and your change. Systems that are incapable of doing this are designed poorly. That is not a shortcoming of cash or technology, it is a shortcoming of the transit operator.
        stephencoyner 8y ago
        That's not the only issue. Cash also slows down the system. If I shove my crumpled dollar bill into the machine it will slow down the whole route, adding cost for the agency. The agency then has to have staff to count the cash, then hire an armored car to take it to a bank. It's not that simple.
tadfisher 8y ago
The United States needs decent public transit. A universal payment system serves those who travel between cities/states. Decent public transit serves everyone who commutes every day in the same city, even those who don't use the service. I imagine the second group is larger than the first.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  What got me was right here. > day, the Clipper card must handle some 35,000 fare rules that determine how much a Bay Area ride costs. Just go fully subsidized and stop collecting fares. There problem solved. Seriously the most efficient way to do X is usually don't do X.
- nofunsir 8y ago
  The United States [ok] needs [opinion and/or unprovable] decent [what defines decent? I'd say it's pretty decent already, and I've lived in Europe on foot.] public transit [Who pays? If I have a car, I don't need it and won't pay for it unless you force me with a gun.]
zaroth 8y ago
“Why, what fast payments you have!” All the better to track you with, my dear. Those drive by toll scanners are great for paying tolls. Also really great for recording, for all time, everyone who drives under them. Standardizing a fare payment system just does the same for mass transit. Not that there aren’t programs to add facial recognition in all these spaces which could be good enough, but why make it easy? Until there’s a Federal privacy framework which limits the amount and duration of information the government can collect, and some reason to believe the NSA, DEA, and FBI are actually adhering to those agreements, above and beyond admissibility in court, I am staunchly opposed to any of these systems in the name of efficiency. It needs to be illegal to use these tolling systems for surveillance, because the next “gas tax” is squaring up to be a GPS based mileage tax.
- xxpor 8y ago
  There's literally nothing stopping govts from putting up licence plate scanners everywhere already. This seems like a silly criticism.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > There's literally nothing stopping govts from putting up licence plate scanners everywhere already. Except for the courts which have started to tell them that they can't do that.
  - astrodust 8y ago
    What, you think they haven't already done that? Many toll highways use license plate recognition to do billing for non-transponder cars.
  - save_ferris 8y ago
    Not to mention the networked telemetry systems present in almost all modern cars. GPS is standard, as are "smart" entertainment consoles. Our cars already generate tons of data that can be used to track us, I'd be far more comfortable with recording a single data point on a toll road than I would having every single one of my movements tracked.
- 8y ago
monksy 8y ago
If you opened up public transport for everyone, you'd never be able to use it. The homeless will overwhelm it as a new home. They do that in Chicago but it's much more limited because they have to spend money to do that.
jorblumesea 8y ago
How about the US just gets a proper transit system in the first place? Is this really our biggest problem?
sonnyblarney 8y ago
Would be better to have some kind of digital payment system that didn't involve credit, and that was free, essentially a true electronic currency. It doesn't have to be blockchain and it's fine if it were centrally managed. Would be nice if it were anonymous.
- drivingmenuts 8y ago
  What would be nicer if it was actually secure. But out side of certain alphabet agencies, government-provided security is a pipe-dream.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
Alternative solution: Stop charging fares for mass transit. Pay for it with taxes and let the people who don't use mass transit subsidize it anyway.
- rexpop 8y ago
  This is, logistically, a superior solution. The trouble is collecting taxes: we're pretty bad at it. Even in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, transit is perennially under-funded by wealthy tech firms' taxes and over-utilized by their employees.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    "This is the superior solution but we haven't done it yet" seems like a pretty good argument for doing it. It's not as if the problem is that the government doesn't actually know how to collect taxes. What you're really identifying is a different problem -- the government keeps not funding transit. But that's a completely independent problem. Look at what they do with fuel tax revenues. They're generally supposed to go to transportation but half the states spend the money trying to fill the hole in their unfunded pensions and then complain that they have no money for transportation. The real question is, would people accept a small increase in sales or income tax in exchange for an elimination of transit fares? To which the answer is probably yes. Because even if you can't use mass transit for whatever reason, everybody loves getting other drivers off the road, which is exactly what making mass transit free would do. If the legislature subsequently diverts the new money that was supposed to go to transit, that problem is independent and preexisting. And once mass transit is free, more people would use it, creating a larger lobby for making it better.
    - rexpop 8y ago
      Penny pinching on a government level seems to be symptomatic of local wealth not paying its fair share. No one ever got wealthy collecting a government pension. Where is the money going? It's going into offshore accounts, and corporate tax shelters.
hannob 8y ago
And Europe as well... (Though I'd be happy if we'd start with at least a unified system within Germany.)
celer 8y ago
It's a small point, but perhaps a relevant one for the trustworthiness of the article and the author: you can pay for a Baltimore bus with a DC metro card. The article confidently states an incorrect fact.

56 points by stephencoyner 8y ago

z2 8y ago

NYC and Boston are also working on accepting contactless NFC payments through phones and credit cards that support it. Chicago already does, so it feels like we are headed there! Japan standardized to a countrywide compatible payment system years ago, though that seemed to be a technical nightmare as they appear to have merged a ton of existing local standards. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICCard_Connection_en.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICCard_Connection_en...

monksy 8y ago
Oh no those things are aweful. Those are meant for only strict pay per ride situations. (At least with the credit cards) Other things you have to consider: 1. Protected classes on the value (senior, students) 2. Wage benefit classes (that's where the fare is pretaxed) 3. Transfers Being a person that had his CC charged over his ventra card (which has a full monthly pass) this crap pisses me off.
- z2 8y ago
  Ouch that's unfortunate and I can imagine the impossibility of a refund if the wrong card in a wallet of compatible cards is charged... I had a good experience with London's tube tracking my contactless CC usage properly though (full price fare, transfers, up to a daily max after x pounds).
  - monksy 8y ago
    So heres the thing.. I can't request a refund. To Ventra.. I presented a valid payment. I accepted service and recieved service. To the Credit card company, they're garbage. I can't opt out of a contactless card. I chewed out the CC CSR.. but they try to frame it as me being in a bad situation. ("That sounds like a terrible situation, I can understand how this can be frustrating in a big city") BTW: This is chase.

microcolonel 8y ago

I don't know that normal contactless cards (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, etc.) couldn't be used as-is. Tap on >> full charge. Tap off >> short trip refund. Here in southern Ontario, Metrolinx Presto cards work this way, and I don't see anything about them that can't be accomplished with standard contactless credit cards.

esotericn 8y ago
In London (UK) you just get charged the next day. No pre-charge. The chances of someone having a card that won't accept a ten quid charge is fairly minimal and TfL just ban cards that get declined.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  That's cool, why do people bother with Oyster then? I get it if you're trying to delegate it to a minor, but why do adults use something other than a credit card?
  - notahacker 8y ago
    Oyster came first, and is still useful for tourists and other people who for whatever reason don't have contactless cards. And you can have prepaid season tickets on Oyster cards, which works for a lot of commuters
  - frosted-flakes 8y ago
    Can you load a season/discounted fare pass on a credit card?
    - microcolonel 8y ago
      > Can you load a season/discounted fare pass on a credit card? When it comes to discounts, you can accomplish that by identifying the card as a discounted fare card. When it comes to a season pass, just identify the card then don't process a payment. As for the feasibility of this, I don't know, but there is almost certainly a viable mechanism for each of these things.

nofunsir 8y ago

Why? How? This would have to be a Federal program, and it doesn't fall under their purview to provide such a program. The States are all independent in this regard. For example, even though we all have Driver's Licenses, the 50 states have merely agreed to honor other DLs from other states.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> This would have to be a Federal program No it wouldn't, though that would be an option. Common standards for public services don't even necessarily require a formal direct agreement between all participants, much less a central mandate. > and it doesn't fall under their purview to provide such a program That's... debatable. Providing for post roads (which is an important use of most public roads) is an explicit federal mandate, and promoting efficiency in the shared uses of such roads is certainly closely-enough tied to the that function to be a legitimate pursuit as part of it; tying such a standard to, e.g., federal infrastructure funding is very hard to view as illegitimate.
- nofunsir 8y ago
  Stretchy McStretchface. That's not even close to debatable. This (pork) is why we can't have nice things.
gowld 8y ago
"merely agreed" because it's required by the US Constitution
- wtvanhest 8y ago
  is it? I wasn't aware that it was.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  The constitution requires that contracts be honored place to place, but not certifications or licenses. Legal and professional groups have different licenses in different states and don't cross honor. Teacher licenses are only good in one state, for example. Many states don't recognize concealed carry permits from states with less stringent licensing requirements.

corodra 8y ago

We need to decentralize all the things! One organization cannot have a hold on multiple organizations. We need to centralize all the things! One organization needs to unify all other organizations.

viraptor 8y ago
Cooperating doesn't mean centralised. Payment systems using common standard can be compatible and the payments distributed behind the scenes. You can still have a number of federated systems taking to each other without a central organisation.

ars 8y ago

After having tried it exclusively for 1 month, I absolutely loath public transport and would never use it if I had another choice. And I think it should be free for everyone. I would even support being taxed in order to expand it. (Improving it isn't possible IMO.) CMV: Roads are free, why shouldn't public transport be free? Being able to get around should be one of those services governments provide, and they should provide people with choices in how they prefer to get around. (Different people like different things, I hate public transport, but other people don't.)

Helloworldboy 8y ago
roads aren't free, they're paid for and (barely) maintained through our tax money

azeotropic 8y ago

We have this. It's called a Federal Reserve Note. You may have seen them before. CityLab is beyond parody. Yes, sure, the real problem with public transit is that jet-setting tourists have to install new apps on their iPhoneX in each city they visit.

jchw 8y ago
I haven't touched a physical dollar bill in multiple years.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  So? ATMs are everywhere. If you need to access transit in a pinch, you can just take out some cash. It's the universal fallback payment.
  - stephencoyner 8y ago
    Most transit systems do not provide any change. So if you go to an ATM and get $20, then break it for a $2.00 fare, you lose $18.00. That's not a solution.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      I bought a train ticket the other day from a vending machine. You put in a $20 and it spits out a ticket and your change. Systems that are incapable of doing this are designed poorly. That is not a shortcoming of cash or technology, it is a shortcoming of the transit operator.
      - stephencoyner 8y ago
        That's not the only issue. Cash also slows down the system. If I shove my crumpled dollar bill into the machine it will slow down the whole route, adding cost for the agency. The agency then has to have staff to count the cash, then hire an armored car to take it to a bank. It's not that simple.

tadfisher 8y ago

The United States needs decent public transit. A universal payment system serves those who travel between cities/states. Decent public transit serves everyone who commutes every day in the same city, even those who don't use the service. I imagine the second group is larger than the first.

Gibbon1 8y ago
What got me was right here. > day, the Clipper card must handle some 35,000 fare rules that determine how much a Bay Area ride costs. Just go fully subsidized and stop collecting fares. There problem solved. Seriously the most efficient way to do X is usually don't do X.
nofunsir 8y ago
The United States [ok] needs [opinion and/or unprovable] decent [what defines decent? I'd say it's pretty decent already, and I've lived in Europe on foot.] public transit [Who pays? If I have a car, I don't need it and won't pay for it unless you force me with a gun.]

zaroth 8y ago

“Why, what fast payments you have!” All the better to track you with, my dear. Those drive by toll scanners are great for paying tolls. Also really great for recording, for all time, everyone who drives under them. Standardizing a fare payment system just does the same for mass transit. Not that there aren’t programs to add facial recognition in all these spaces which could be good enough, but why make it easy? Until there’s a Federal privacy framework which limits the amount and duration of information the government can collect, and some reason to believe the NSA, DEA, and FBI are actually adhering to those agreements, above and beyond admissibility in court, I am staunchly opposed to any of these systems in the name of efficiency. It needs to be illegal to use these tolling systems for surveillance, because the next “gas tax” is squaring up to be a GPS based mileage tax.

xxpor 8y ago
There's literally nothing stopping govts from putting up licence plate scanners everywhere already. This seems like a silly criticism.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > There's literally nothing stopping govts from putting up licence plate scanners everywhere already. Except for the courts which have started to tell them that they can't do that.
- astrodust 8y ago
  What, you think they haven't already done that? Many toll highways use license plate recognition to do billing for non-transponder cars.
- save_ferris 8y ago
  Not to mention the networked telemetry systems present in almost all modern cars. GPS is standard, as are "smart" entertainment consoles. Our cars already generate tons of data that can be used to track us, I'd be far more comfortable with recording a single data point on a toll road than I would having every single one of my movements tracked.
8y ago

monksy 8y ago

If you opened up public transport for everyone, you'd never be able to use it. The homeless will overwhelm it as a new home. They do that in Chicago but it's much more limited because they have to spend money to do that.

jorblumesea 8y ago

How about the US just gets a proper transit system in the first place? Is this really our biggest problem?

sonnyblarney 8y ago

Would be better to have some kind of digital payment system that didn't involve credit, and that was free, essentially a true electronic currency. It doesn't have to be blockchain and it's fine if it were centrally managed. Would be nice if it were anonymous.

drivingmenuts 8y ago
What would be nicer if it was actually secure. But out side of certain alphabet agencies, government-provided security is a pipe-dream.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

Alternative solution: Stop charging fares for mass transit. Pay for it with taxes and let the people who don't use mass transit subsidize it anyway.

rexpop 8y ago
This is, logistically, a superior solution. The trouble is collecting taxes: we're pretty bad at it. Even in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, transit is perennially under-funded by wealthy tech firms' taxes and over-utilized by their employees.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  "This is the superior solution but we haven't done it yet" seems like a pretty good argument for doing it. It's not as if the problem is that the government doesn't actually know how to collect taxes. What you're really identifying is a different problem -- the government keeps not funding transit. But that's a completely independent problem. Look at what they do with fuel tax revenues. They're generally supposed to go to transportation but half the states spend the money trying to fill the hole in their unfunded pensions and then complain that they have no money for transportation. The real question is, would people accept a small increase in sales or income tax in exchange for an elimination of transit fares? To which the answer is probably yes. Because even if you can't use mass transit for whatever reason, everybody loves getting other drivers off the road, which is exactly what making mass transit free would do. If the legislature subsequently diverts the new money that was supposed to go to transit, that problem is independent and preexisting. And once mass transit is free, more people would use it, creating a larger lobby for making it better.
  - rexpop 8y ago
    Penny pinching on a government level seems to be symptomatic of local wealth not paying its fair share. No one ever got wealthy collecting a government pension. Where is the money going? It's going into offshore accounts, and corporate tax shelters.

hannob 8y ago

And Europe as well... (Though I'd be happy if we'd start with at least a unified system within Germany.)

celer 8y ago

It's a small point, but perhaps a relevant one for the trustworthiness of the article and the author: you can pay for a Baltimore bus with a DC metro card. The article confidently states an incorrect fact.