
The United States Needs a Universal System to Pay for Public Transit - stephencoyner
https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/04/public-transit-app-ticket-bus-pass-subway-fare-travel-tips/586495/
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zaroth
“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
There's literally nothing stopping govts from putting up licence plate
scanners everywhere already. This seems like a silly criticism.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> 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.

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azeotropic
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.

~~~
loeg
There are transit systems that literally do not accept cash. The light rail
trains, trolleys, and to some extent BRT all come to mind in Seattle.

~~~
StudentStuff
The light rail and trolleys in Seattle do accept cash at Westlake and similar
large stations. Busses do as well...

~~~
loeg
You cannot board the light rail (nor BRT) and present cash. You have to buy an
Orca card first, which are available in various locations, but chiefly, none
of those locations are inside the light rail or BRT.

~~~
rcw4256
Ticket vending machines, which sell both ORCA cards and fare tickets, are
available at every light rail station.

For BRT, you can pay cash at the time of boarding.

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AnthonyMouse
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
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
"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.

~~~
nofunsir
I will not pay for your transportation. Believe it or not, it is ludicrous to
many to imagine such a tax.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Are you fine with taxes paying for roads just not trains and buses, or do you
not even want roads? The first is inconsistent and the second is a very small
minority position.

Because this kind of infrastructure is heavy on fixed costs. It takes money to
build or operate it, but once you do, the cost of the incremental car or the
incremental passenger is so close to zero that collecting a fare equal to the
actual marginal cost would cost more to collect than the amount of the fare.
But charging more than that would unduly discourage productive use of the
infrastructure that is already being paid for.

Which means the most efficient pricing strategy is flat rate. And since ~0% of
the population consists of hermits who never use any form of transportation,
that makes it one of the most appropriate things to fund with taxes.

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z2
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...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICCard_Connection_en.svg)

~~~
monksy
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
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
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.

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nofunsir
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.

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gowld
"merely agreed" because it's required by the US Constitution

~~~
hannasanarion
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.

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microcolonel
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.

~~~
JonathonW
The big argument against this (for public transit agencies) is likely
transaction fees: it's going to be more expensive for the agency to process a
bunch of tiny transactions for each trip than it will be to process relatively
few larger transactions when a stored-value card is refilled.

The other obvious downside is more of a logistical thing: credit card
transactions need connectivity. With a stored-value card system, transactions
don't need a network to clear (everything's happening locally between the card
and the reader); this means you don't have big backups if networks go down,
you don't have a time lag waiting for transactions to clear, and you can place
readers in locations where connectivity isn't guaranteed (like buses).

That said, it's not unheard-of for public transit to take standard contactless
credit cards. For example, Transport for London (at least theoretically) takes
contactless payment systemwide.

~~~
diebeforei485
They can charge higher fares to people who pay with contactless credit cards
(as opposed to their own card). Many agencies already do this - for example,
Caltrain and BART charge higher fares to those who aren't using a Clipper
card. As long as the difference is high enough to offset the fees, this should
not be an issue.

~~~
frosted-flakes
But it costs TfL more to run its Oyster program than it would if everyone just
used contactless. Oyster and contactless in London are equal with a few
exceptions relating to how daily/weekly caps are counted.

~~~
diebeforei485
That may not be the case in the US where card transaction fees are much, much
higher.

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corodra
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
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.

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tadfisher
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
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.

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

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monksy
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.

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celer
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.

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ars
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.)

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

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

