Passenger Trains > SEPTA delaying riders with forced advertising

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/05/06/septa-kiosk-advertisement/

"But someone at SEPTA has thought up a pretty ingenious — or nefarious, depending on your perspective — idea: The transit agency has started putting advertisements on fare kiosk displays, which you have no choice but to click through in order to purchase your ticket."  "At least one person has already complained about missing a train thanks to SEPTA’s new captive advertising pilot."

"On the one hand, SEPTA’s facing a potentially catastrophic risk to its budget, on account of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, one of its biggest funders, being billions of dollars in debt. SEPTA made $14.5 million in advertising revenue in the last fiscal year, which is pennies compared to its billion-dollar budget."

"SEPTA says the ad program, which debuted a few weeks ago at selected stations along the Broad Street and Market Frankford Lines, is only a pilot, with ads implanted on 20 of the agency’s 300 total kiosks. The idea is that the advertisements, which cycle through the touch screen kiosks, will linger for a second or two after you click them to begin your transaction. Spokesperson Andrew Busch says SEPTA’s tried to avoid having the ad-bearing kiosks deployed at high-traffic stops. “We may revisit having that one there,” he says of the ad at the Walnut-Locust station downtown."

This really defeats the purpose of offboard fare collection to speed up travel.

The worst kind of click bait..........anything that causes a delay to a focused priority.

Arthritic ticketing machines can be one of the worst problems of mass transit.  My message to transit agencies:  If you want people to ride, make the process of riding faster, not slower, easier, not harder.    BSB  

Some TVM's should be a of a very simple design to buy a one-way ticket. Something on the order of parking machines where you simply choose the fare zone, plunk down dollar bills or coins or insert plastic D.C.'s and C.C.'s, and out comes a receipt, in this case a ticket. They are certainly much cheaper to buy.  



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/12/19 06:37 by joemvcnj.

joemvcnj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Some TVM's should be a of a very simple design to
> buy a one-way ticket. Something on the order of
> parking machines where you simply choose the fare
> zone, plunk down dollar bills or coins or insert
> plastic D.C.'s and C.C.'s, and out comes a
> receipt, in this case a ticket. They are certainly
> much cheaper to buy.  

That's how the NJ Transit bus Ticket Vending Machines work. Most / all park rides have them.

Posted from Android

Every bus TVM machine I have seen (at Newark Penn and PABT), and they are rare everywhere else in the state, are traditional TVM's of ATM machine proportions, though a simpler menu to buy the bus ticket. You still have $100K or $150K machine doing a very simple task.

The fumbling for all those dollars, no exact fare, with zone fares, odd dollar and cent amounts, then throw in transfer charges, with fares split on either side of the transfer locations, make these Cruiser buses rolling tip boxes, but with lots of cash in them. You need to bring  lots of dollar bills and a roll of nickels to ride them if made exact fare. They don't like any bills other than $1 bills in the exact fare routes. It is so 1960's in NJ, except we are talking about fares about 8 times as much, so much more physical cash involved. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/12/19 10:21 by joemvcnj.

When my wife & I rode the DC Metro in the '80s the biggest problem was getting the machines to accept paper money, which delayed the process. They would not accept new bills, which had to be crinkled-up just so.
The only problem we ever had with what was then a pretty good system...

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

Why have tickets at all on a suburban system? Doesn’t contactless payment exist in the USA, and for those without bank accounts what about stored value tickets which can be topped up in cash?

Having everyone both tap in and tap out wherever they get on and get off.
SEPTA may try that, but that would never work on the LIRR and some other systems. Huge volumes of people, many to enter and leave a station. LIRR can inhale 1,200 people down 5 sets of stairs in NYPS in 5 minutes and go. No time for tapping in. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/19 07:19 by joemvcnj.

joemvcnj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Having everyone both tap in and tap out wherever
> they get on and get off.
> SEPTA may try that, but that would never work on
> the LIRR and some other systems. Huge volumes of
> people, many to enter and leave a station. LIRR
> can inhale 1,200 people down 5 sets of stairs in
> NYPS in 5 minutes and go. No time for tapping
> in. 



Moscow does it at every Metro and commuter rail station.  1,200 people per hour would be a minor station. 10-car trains with most headways around 2 - 3 minutes, all day. Some as close as 1' 45".

Ads that slow throughput are a bad idea.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/19 08:06 by Duna.

I just can't visualize implementing something like that in NYPS. Then hundreds of them getting off the train at their suburban station, and queuing up to tap out in an orderly fashion whereas they stampede each other to get to their cars and out of the parking lot ASAP. 

It works; just not invented in the USA. Slightly more seriously it works in London: some really large volumes of passengers get though barriers on a daily basis.