Robert Jones wrote to "Going Public" with a question about fare card passback rules. The rest of Jones' letter and the passback rules are after the jump.
"My wife and I had an encounter with a CTA bus driver [Wednesday] night that has brought a question to the front of my mind, and I was hoping you could help me with it.
We know that the farecard system sucks on the buses. You get on, wave your card, the thing beeps some indeterminate number of times and you go on your way, only to have the driver call you back to try your card again. And again. And again.
Meanwhile, everyone else who wants to get on the bus is standing impatiently behind you. It's so commonplace that it seems the driver just waves you through after a few failed attempts almost all the time.
(How much money is the CTA losing in unpaid fares because of this?)
Things get even worse when you're using passback. ...
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What are the CTA passback rules?
My wife and I run into trouble all the time when we both try to ride on
my card. Nowhere does the CTA give any instructions on how to
properly do this.
It's easy at 'L' stations: Scan one, go through the turnstile, scan the next, done.
We figured out that on the bus, you have to tell the driver that you're paying for multiple people on the card, and he has to manually cycle the farebox between payments.
However, it seems that at least half the time the second payment refuses to register, and after a few attempts... you get the wavethrough.
[Wednesday night], we didn't get the wave-through. After I'd scanned my fare, I told the driver we were paying for two.
He hit the farebox, and I scanned my card again. And failed. Multiple times. The driver finally said, pointing at my wife, 'She didn't start with you. She has to pay.'
I tried to figure out what he meant. I was *trying* to pay for her. I told you so. You cycled the box, just like every driver has managed to do... and now the system was failing, as usual, and he was getting more and more belligerent trying to explain what the problem was, and failing.
He was practically yelling at us in the front of the bus, and my wife had had enough when he utterly dismissed her like a little girl and began 'talking' only to me. She informed the driver we were getting off the bus, I noted his number aloud, and we left.
What it *seemed* he was attempting to say is that you need to inform the driver *before you scan the first time* how many you'll be paying for, and since I'd failed to do that, it wouldn't let me pay for her, so she'd have to pay for herself.
(Not possible, since she didn't bring a card, and we were going to a concert, had hit the ATM, and only had $20s on us.) This is something that no driver has ever told us before.
I'm aware that, technically, our payment method failed, and the burden was on us to pay, but it's also the case that the drivers seem to understand that it's fundamentally broken, and will let you through -- unless they're in a rotten mood, as this one seemed to be.
The driver was within his rights to keep my wife from boarding, but he didn't need to be a complete asshole about it, and the bit about telling the driver *first* about a passback is new to me.
There is no information anywhere on the CTA's Web site about the proper way to use passback on a bus. Can you confirm whether this is the case, and if not, what the 'right' method to use passback on a bus fare is?
Here are the passback rules for the Chicago Card: "Just like traditional farecards, passback privileges allow up to seven customers to board the same bus or enter through the same rail station turnstile using one card.
Each passback ride has the appropriate fare (full fare or transfer) deducted from the Chicago Card.
In rail stations, each customer must touch the card to the touchpad and pass through the turnstile before passing the card back for the next customer to use.
On the bus, each customer should touch the touchpad and pass the card back to the next customer. The bus operator will press a button to allow the next customer to board.
All customers using one card must begin their trip at the same origin.
If six or fewer customers begin their trip while using one card, and they attempt to transfer to another bus or rail line with customers who were not present at the origin of the trip, within a two hour time period, the card will not be accepted for fare payment for the additional customers."
It's easy at 'L' stations: Scan one, go through the turnstile, scan the next, done.
We figured out that on the bus, you have to tell the driver that you're paying for multiple people on the card, and he has to manually cycle the farebox between payments.
However, it seems that at least half the time the second payment refuses to register, and after a few attempts... you get the wavethrough.
[Wednesday night], we didn't get the wave-through. After I'd scanned my fare, I told the driver we were paying for two.
He hit the farebox, and I scanned my card again. And failed. Multiple times. The driver finally said, pointing at my wife, 'She didn't start with you. She has to pay.'
I tried to figure out what he meant. I was *trying* to pay for her. I told you so. You cycled the box, just like every driver has managed to do... and now the system was failing, as usual, and he was getting more and more belligerent trying to explain what the problem was, and failing.
He was practically yelling at us in the front of the bus, and my wife had had enough when he utterly dismissed her like a little girl and began 'talking' only to me. She informed the driver we were getting off the bus, I noted his number aloud, and we left.
What it *seemed* he was attempting to say is that you need to inform the driver *before you scan the first time* how many you'll be paying for, and since I'd failed to do that, it wouldn't let me pay for her, so she'd have to pay for herself.
(Not possible, since she didn't bring a card, and we were going to a concert, had hit the ATM, and only had $20s on us.) This is something that no driver has ever told us before.
I'm aware that, technically, our payment method failed, and the burden was on us to pay, but it's also the case that the drivers seem to understand that it's fundamentally broken, and will let you through -- unless they're in a rotten mood, as this one seemed to be.
The driver was within his rights to keep my wife from boarding, but he didn't need to be a complete asshole about it, and the bit about telling the driver *first* about a passback is new to me.
There is no information anywhere on the CTA's Web site about the proper way to use passback on a bus. Can you confirm whether this is the case, and if not, what the 'right' method to use passback on a bus fare is?
Here are the passback rules for the Chicago Card: "Just like traditional farecards, passback privileges allow up to seven customers to board the same bus or enter through the same rail station turnstile using one card.
Each passback ride has the appropriate fare (full fare or transfer) deducted from the Chicago Card.
In rail stations, each customer must touch the card to the touchpad and pass through the turnstile before passing the card back for the next customer to use.
On the bus, each customer should touch the touchpad and pass the card back to the next customer. The bus operator will press a button to allow the next customer to board.
All customers using one card must begin their trip at the same origin.
If six or fewer customers begin their trip while using one card, and they attempt to transfer to another bus or rail line with customers who were not present at the origin of the trip, within a two hour time period, the card will not be accepted for fare payment for the additional customers."
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2 Comments
Joe001 said:
What the driver was trying to explain is that you can't pay for another person's fare during the two-hour transfer period if you both didn't pay the initial fare (the one that began the transfer period) at the same time. In other words, you can't use your card to travel by yourself, meet your wife and then pay for the two of you within two hours of your initial ride. Multiple riders must start out at the same time and share the same transfer period. That's what the last two paragraphs mean in the passback rules that Tracy reprinted above. Your account doesn't make clear if this is what happened Wednesday night, but it might be the reason for at least some of the difficulty you've experienced. And you do have to let the bus driver know each time you are paying for a companion so he or she can push the appropriate button on the farebox to bypass the safeguard on the card against a second fare accidentally being charged.
mo51 said:
"In other words, you can't use your card to travel by yourself, meet your wife and then pay for the two of you within two hours of your initial ride. Multiple riders must start out at the same time and share the same transfer period."
This is correct, but is a flaw, if you ask me. Makes no sense. It's like they didn't think about this scenario, which is very common, when designing the system.
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