Welcome to Twitter Tuesday, our roundup of the latest Metro related tweets. To get our attention, add the #MetroLosAngeles tag to your tweets and subscribe to our feed if you haven’t already. For specific complaints and customer service, please use the Customer Comment Form on metro.net.
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Many more tweets after the jump!
Categories: Feedback, Twitter Tuesdays
The idea of TAP is not a bad idea – reducing the need to carry change or eliminating the time it takes the fare box to accept dollar bills is of course great. The problem is that TAP is buggy. Or at least, it seems buggy. Other transit systems in metropolitan areas use similar IC cards for fare payment and people seem to love it.
I just got back from Taipei where I used their EasyCard to pay for rail & bus rides every day. Aside from the fare discount that I received by using the card (20% off rail, and transfers between rail-bus or bus-rail also had a discount), I didn’t have to worry about having exact change or if my card got wet. The card also does not expire (if you don’t use it within 2 years, you have to add more money onto the card to reactivate it, but you don’t have to pay (technically) an additional fee).
Of course, there are some differences between Taipei’s system and the LA Metro system. They use a distance-based system for rail (so you tap when you enter the station and when you exit). The EasyCard is a prepaid fare card only (you can’t load day passes on it; I don’t think “all-you-can-ride” monthly passes exist in Taipei, though there are day and week passes geared mostly for tourists).
It’d be great if someone would research the differences/similarities between various metro systems’ IC cards. That would be an interesting read!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Twitter Tuesday is the highlight of my week. I learn something new every time I read these tweets (new TAP site coming soon?!) and love seeing photographs of everyone’s experiences. It’s so nice to be part of a greater transit community, and have a place to get our questions and concerns answered honestly and to air our complaints, and share photos, and, dare I say, even compliments! There are other municipal transit agencies (who shall remain nameless) who can’t even answer a question by email in an intelligent and timely fashion.
Everyone at The Source should be really proud of what they are contributing to this community, not just on (Twitter) Tuesday, but every day!