Sunday, November 11, 2007

Now it's time for....by erik halstead

Re: Now it's time for....

A good rule of thumb is that if you buy a SINGLE ticket, it's pre-
validated. If you buy multiple tickets, you must manually validate
them.

On the older machines (the ones that are coin only) they only
dispense single tickets; on the machines that take credit/debit cards
(and have the nice big pretty displays, can speak to you, can go from
English to Spanish) you can purchase multiple tickets - I believe you
can purchase two tickets at once (for a round-trip, or for two
people), a strip of ten tickets, or even a monthly pass.

You can also buy a book of ten tickets at your friendly Fred Meyers,
Albertson's or Safeway. (They are much more compact and you just
tear a ticket off when you need to use it.)

Of course, if the machine spits out a large ticket, you can't stick
it in the validator.

You can also buy a day ticket ($4.25) if you're going to ride for a
bit; or a seven day ticket. Also, monthly passes do get discounted
for the second half of the month (of course they're still only good
to the end of the month) but sometimes it might work out to be a good
deal.

Would a Fare Inspector buy your story? It depends on a lot of
factors, but in short if you look honest, look like you're new (or a
tourist), they will probably cut you some slack and either take your
ticket or make you buy a new ticket at the next stop. If you look
like you're up to no good, the Inspector is having a bad day, or
there's a lot of riff-raff on the train, you'll get a ticket. In
general they err on the side of issuing citations (that is their job,
after all) but most of the Inspectors I've seen are decent guys who
are there to help.

Just don't make up a story about buying a two zone ticket at 82nd and
Flavel from a TVM, while getting caught with an expired ticket as
your only fare instrument on the Blue Line near Willow Creek. (True
story; needless to say that Inspector was rolling his eyes while
directing the punk off the train for his citation.)
--- In trimetoperators@yahoogroups.com, Michael Feldman
wrote:
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