BOB2 Wrote:
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> No my favorite fare card vendor fiasco experience
> comes from the mismanaged, long, slow, and
> extremely costly contract at the LACMTA....
>
> And, the latest, is not even CTA's first fare card
> fiasco....
>
> Part of this seems to stem from vendor culture
> steeped in slopping the political trough and from
> a limited competitive vendor pool.

I go back to the good old MTA/MBTA days when you would buy a token at the ticket booth, stick the token into a slot pass through the turnstile and finally, step into a trolley car.
In any event, I am at a loss regarding how this is all supposed to work. Apparently the RTA wants the CTA, Metra and Pace transit systems to all accept the same fare card.
The thing is, the CTA is essentially a "closed" system, where you can pretty much go anywhere on the system for the same fare, plus maybe $0.25 for transfers. Metra is a "zoned" system, the further you go the more you pay. And, although I have never used a Pace bus, I assume Pace is zoned as well.
I guess my question is (among others) how do you convince a large metropolitan population to accept the fact that the CTA fare may no longer apply. People who are used to travelling all over the city for $2.50/trip are now going to have to pay multiple times that to reach their destinations, assuming their destinations involve Metra, etc..