The M15 limited bus is one of the new SBS buses in New York City. It uses a new system where you buy a ticket from one of the machines pictured above before you board the bus and then you can enter the bus from any of the doors, rather than just the front door where the driver is. It’s also supposed to have a dedicated bus lane and, though I have no clue how this works, priority at traffic lights.
The problem I see with this is that it doesn’t really save time at all and it wasn’t advertised enough. I’ve only been back in the city for a little while, so it’s really no surprise that I hadn’t heard of this before having to figure it out firsthand, but other commuters seemed just as confused by the thing as I did, including my mother, who was born here and, after some time away, moved back 17 years ago. She watches the news regularly but had never heard of this change and it wound up causing an incident on the bus we took this afternoon, the M15 at 1st Avenue and 14th Street.
You see, we showed up at the bus stop and boarded the bus just like any other bus. The driver sat there and watched us come in through the front door. He watched my mom dip her MetroCard into the machine and saw that it deducted the transit fare. Then as she started to walk away, he called her back and told her she needed a ticket from one of the machines outside. After she had already paid. To get a ticket from the machine she would have to pay again. We wound up having to get off the bus.
My question is this: why did the driver watch my mother dip her card and deduct a fare when he knew that wasn’t the appropriate method for boarding the bus? Why is the card reader even on the bus in the first place if it’s not used for these limited buses? And what recourse does my mother have now to recover the money taken from her? None.
The driver gave my mom one of those paper transfer cards and told her to try that in the ticket machine, but it didn’t work, and of course he drove off right away rather than having to continue dealing with the problem. Not that he could wait around forever of course, with a bus full of passengers, but it still feels like he was trying to evade the problem.
So, in the end, my mom got shorted one fare today. One fare may not sound like much to some people, but every dollar counts and it’s not just the amount, it’s the principle. The NYC MTA stole money from my mother today. That’s bullshit.
Getting back to what I was saying about the process not being any faster, like SBS claims, I believe that it’s all a trick to make things seem faster. The only faster part about it is getting on the bus. It still takes just as long for people to get off the bus. It also takes quite a while to get a ticket. I haven’t been there during the morning rush hour but we spoke to one lady who said that in the morning there are long lines of people waiting to use the machine to get a ticket, and while you’re standing there in line waiting, you’re missing buses that go by. So, how is it really making it faster for passengers to start at point A and reach point B? I also don’t recall the bus using any special lane on 1st avenue, or having some sort of special privilege at the traffic lights.
This whole system just makes things more confusing than they have to be, and it feels like a step backward rather than a step forward. Seriously MTA, paper tickets? You know that’s what they do in third world countries, right? Everyone else in the world is moving towards a permanent prepaid card that you use indefinitely. You don’t even scan, slide or dip it. You simply tap it on a panel that reads the chip in the card to do the fare deduction. You don’t even have to take it out of your wallet. That’s easy and faster. Imagine getting on the bus and dragging your purse over a pad to make your payment, or bumping your wallet against a pad before tucking it back into your pocket. No more fumbling with getting a card in and out of your purse/wallet/pocket. And you know how the secret inspectors verify that you’ve paid? They have a handheld device that reads passengers’ cards to show when they last used them and for what bus. They don’t walk around asking for paper tickets.
One last thing I’d like to mention is the extra costs involved in this venture. The SBS signs on the buses point out how they use less energy because the buses are at the stops for a shorter amount of time. That’s all well and good, but what about the cost of all of the ticket machines? And how is it greener to print paper tickets for every single person for every single ride!!!!!!???? One of the simplest concepts in ‘going green’ is to reduce the use of paper to save forests, not increase it unnecessarily.
The money that’s been wasted on this project should have been used to replace buses with newer, more fuel efficient models, or to upgrade the system to permanent, prepaid tap cards. As far as this goes, though, it’s a step towards the third world in a city that’s supposed to be the best.
Bradley Farless 