Friday, September 18, 2009

Maybe I should start walking more

You have entered 107,426 Bills worth $295,589
Bills with hits: 7,896 Total hits: 8,969
Hit rate: 7.35% Slugging Percentage: 8.35% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,250.53
Your rank (based on George Score) is #222
(out of 52,475 current users with a George Score. [99.6 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 18 out of 7,820 [99.8]
Your initial entries with hits have traveled a total of 4,279,035 miles.
They have averaged 485.4 miles per hit and 193.32 days between each hit.



I know I seem to be a bit anti-debit when it comes to a lot of things. I’d like to think that it’s more about having choice. I read in today’s Miami Herald that Miami-Dade Transit wants to do away with paper transfers. (You can read the article here.)

For those that don’t ride the bus, transfers allow people to use two buses on the same trip without having to pay two full fares. In Miami-Dade County, full fare is $2 and a transfer is 50¢. (Service is so bad that it was overpriced at half that amount.) In order to be able to pay 50¢ for a transfer, you’ll have to buy an EASY Card.

According to the article, the cards will be free for a limited time. If you’re not quick enough to get one, you’ll have to pay $2 and load it online, at Metrorail stations or certain other locations. At least they’ll still be taking cash, so someone that doesn’t have access to the Internet can at least get to one of the machines at one of those select locations.

I generally don’t like situations like this. It seems to me that Miami-Dade Transit Authority is simply trying to get more money out of people. You either have to pay $2 for the card or you have to pay full fare for each bus ride. It seems to me that they’re trying to make it just a little more difficult to take the bus.

I’ll use tokens as an example. Back when bus fare was $1.25, tokens cost 10 for $10, or $1 each. When fare was raised to $1.50, the cost of ten tokens went to $14.50. Yes, that’s right. You saved a whopping 5¢ per trip. If you decided to go downtown to buy some, you’d have to buy five or 10 rolls to make it worth the trip. I think that’s why they were phased out.

What are tourists supposed to do if they want to take our transit system? Are they supposed to donate $2 (per person, no doubt) to get a card that won’t be worth anything when they leave? This is exactly why I started driving.

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