just a few observations of ways to handle zone fares and transfers, or even joint fares between agencies that I’ve noticed over the years and thought interesting enough to comment on.
Boston. I assume once upon a time Boston did not have zone fares, and when they instituted them the folk musicians wrote the song http://www.maj.org/p2005/ThisLand_mta.html#Lyrics about Charlie who didn’t have the nickel to pay the zone charge and so couldn’t get off the train. I often have wondered since his wife could hand him a sandwich every day when the train went by she didn’t just hand him a nickel.
The variation I saw was that light rail subway stations would collect fares at cashier booths, on the surface inbound trains would collect fares at the front door, outbound surface stops they’d collect no fares, consequently they could open all doors.
I grew up on Philadelphia. The entire city was considered 1 zone, so I was a bit confused when I visited Boston, since for light rail at least there’s more than 1 zone inside the city. In Philly city both bus and light rail pay at the front door as you enter, routes that went outside the city pay the zone fare when you exit. Consequently only use the front door outside the city. Some light rail subway stations had cashier booths, some did not, but at rush hour would have a platform attendant to collect paper transfers from other lines, or inspect passes, at the center door.
Bus and Lines that operated entirely in the suburbs from the rail hubs, primarily 69th St Upper Darby and Norritsown, outbound passengers would pay as they exited from the front door. I’m pretty sure if one boarded at a non-terminal stop you got a voucher ticket, when you got off if you didn’t have that voucher they calculated your zone fare as if you boarded at the origin. Inbound you payed upon boarding. I’m not sure how they ha
According to PATCO’s website, http://www.ridepatco.org/freedom.asp, the new vending machines do dispense both PATCO tickets and the SEPTA discounted round trip tickets. The last time I rode, about 6 months ago, they still had separate machines.
We are attempting to deal with this same situation in the Washington DC region where METRO (buses and subway), VRE (Virginia Railway Express), MARC (Maryland Regional Commuter), and various local bus entities are in the process of providing a consolidated inter-line fare collection system. This integration is not simple nor inexpensive as some of it requires substantial fare-collection equipment costs. We are currently using the state-of-the-art SmarTrip, an RFID-based card that METRO developed for its rail/bus systems. Rail-to-bus transfers are currently discounted if a SmarTrip card is used (currently, no discount for bus-to-rail); SmarTrip rail-to-bus and bus-to-bus transfers will be allowed starting this coming January when all paper transfers will be discontinued. SmarTrip is usable on most local bus systems with the last hold-out (Prince George’s County’s “The Bus”) coming on-line within a few months. Bus integration has been relatively simple; not so on the rail side.
The biggest problem is integrating the various commuter rail components (VRE and MARC) into the SmarTrip system as many commuter passengers currently use monthly or multi-trip card-stock tickets. Currently, METRO has told us that Cubic Western (the San Diego firm that first designed METRO’s disastrous farecard dispensing machines) is still working on the solution but whose contract deadline has been extended (still at the original cost of $15 million dollars). LOL!
As for zone fares, METRO has always calculated fares on a per-mile basis, similar to zones but obviously more precise, adding to that, time-of-use charges with rush-hour fares being more expensive. This is done using an entrance reading of either a farecard or SmarTrip and an exit reading of the same card; the appropriate fare would be calculated and then electronically deducted. This has worked quite well for METRO since 1976 when it first opened. As VRE and MARC were originally based on fare zones, I suspect that the calculation of their fares wil