Stock's Blog: February 2008

Friday, February 29, 2008

Reasons I hate bart

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (bart) uses the space age technology of paper tickets. While lesser cities have adapted electronic, rfid, or various plastic cards bart sticks to the same way of doing things that was done in the 70's. Paper, it's good enough for your grandpa and it's good enough for you.
Not an if, but a when the paper gets demagnetized (for me I'd say about every 3-6 days) you can go to the one station where they'll just swap your bad card for another card already knowing you'll see these guys again in a few days. This only works with the "fast pass" card. If you have a regular card, god help you.
Tonight, on par, my card was demagnetized on my way to family friends in el cerrito. If I had 50 cents I could give it to the lady and she'd write me essentially the equivalent of a doctors note to the station head where I was going. But I didn't have 50 cents. I had $20's and $10's. For $20 and $10 dollar bills you go to a machine that gives you change in $5 denominations. The machine didn't like the $10 bill I had, and why should it? So I got to break a $20. It's so nice to have more bills, isn't it? From there you have to cross to the other side of the platform and put the $5 in a $1 machine where you get, guess what??? Nope not dollar bills, dollar coins. Yay!!! Who doesn't love change? So this is it right? Wrong. You then need to go to a ticket machine, put a dollar coin in the slot and press cancel. It's a secret trick to getting your single dollar coin into four 25cent coins (quarters). Finally, what seemed like hours later I got my little dr's note and was ready to board the train. As luck would have it my train just left, but in 18 minutes I'd be fortunate enough to catch another one.
I'm just glad I live in a major metropolitan city. Imagine how hard the experience would be in some small suburb type place??