Yeah that's a stupid system and I've seen it in many places. Being asked to go to <some random convenience store> to get the official public transit card, even

Yeah that's a stupid system and I've seen it in many places. Being asked to go to <some random convenience store> to get the official public transit card, even the dude at the station couldn't sell me one. The vending machines at every station should be capable of directly vending public transit cards. I think most of the better systems around the world do work that way.