I turned 23 today, so I celebrated by taking the day off and heading into Manhattan. It's an easy trip on the train, and I find most of the city to be more entertaining than whatever else I could do without spending loads of money. I ended up visiting the American Museum of Natural History. Party time, indeed. But it was fun nonetheless.
I actually enjoy visiting museums. Apparently this isn't exactly common for males my age. What's even odder is that I didn't enjoy going to them as a child. I just find things a bit more interesting nowadays for some reason. But then I see groups of school children like today and realize that it seems that most children are bored as hell at museums, whereas older adults spend more time appreciating what they are seeing.
I always take the train into the city if I have the choice. It's much easier to park at the train station than it is to find a spot in Manhattan, and much cheaper. But when I ride the train, I'm no ordinary passenger. You see, I'm an engineer. No, not a train engineer, though that would be a neat profession. I'm an electrical engineer. Like most engineers, I tend to look at the flaws in a system and see in what practical ways something could be done to fix the problem.
The problem I noticed today was that it seems to take some time for conductors to go through the train to collect tickets. I'm not saying the method in which they collect tickets is poor. If you are unfamiliar with the system on Metro North (which I would imagine is virtually the same as in most train companies throughout the United States), it goes like this:
- Conductor walks up to you
- You hand him the ticket or pass
- If it is a monthly pass, he hands it back to you without marking or stamping or punching holes in it
- If it is any other type of pass, he punches or marks it in a specific way to mark that trip and hands it back to you
- If it is a round trip ticket, he punches in one spot to mark that trip and hands it back to you
- If it is a one-way ticket, he punches it and keeps it
- After dealing with your specific ticket, he then takes a special strip with numbers on it, punches in two locations the number of the station (or zone) that denotes your destination. For example, Fairfield Station is station 18, so when I head back from Grand Central, he punches a "1" and an "8". That slip is then placed in a specially-made "loop" behind my seat, so that when he or another conductor walk through later on, they know my ticket has been processed. They can also then remove excess slips.
This is quite a long process, even with multiple conductors working a train. I've gone on 20 minute train rides without having my ticket checked. In fact, I'm going to use an unchecked ticket to go to my high school reunion in a couple weeks. Either way, the system is pretty outdated, and could use some fixin'.
But how? Well, let's look at the problems first:
- Slow
- Doesn't catch all train riders
The first one wouldn't really matter if the time between stops were long enough for conductors to check all ticketed passengers. But for Metro North trains, you could go as little as 5 minutes in between stops. That's just asking for freeloaders. That's lost profit for the train company. Sure, some of that is made up in the price of every ticket, but there's got to be a way to avoid it.
How about a scanning system like they use at stadiums and ballparks to check tickets? How expensive would it be to have barcodes for all tickets that involve punching? Sure, you could use them for monthly passes, but the time saved would be negligible since it normally takes a second or two.
But one thing that really slows down the conductor is when people pay on board. It's strongly discouraged, and fares are considerably higher (except for senior citizens; nothing wrong with that) to prevent people from just hopping on board without a ticket. But what if you incorporated a system that allowed people to pay with their credit card instantly? You see those in stores all the time; I bought my breakfast before the train by just waving my American Express card. I'm sure if you had one of those it might help.
However, the system they have now with keeping track of ticket customers is pretty efficient. But how could a ticket scanning system be used to do this as well? I'm not sure, but I'm sure somebody will think of it.
I think of goofy shit when I'm on the train.
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