Comments on: Should you buy an unlimited-ride Metrocard?

By: scatterfingers

scatterfingers — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 20:58:00 +0000

I bought one when I was touristing in NY on the cheap… it was definitely worth it for me, as I was on the subway 6 or 8 times a day.

By: sdmikev

sdmikev — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 04:42:00 +0000

yea, when I go, I ride usually ride the subway at least 4 times a day, if not more..

By: cscott

cscott — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 00:24:00 +0000

You recharge the card in 20 secs, at one of the kiosks in the subway w/ cash or debit/cc. I very rarely encounter an interminable line at them.

By: timmaguire

timmaguire — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 20:22:00 +0000

No. There’s rarely a line.

Of course, children can make it a burden when they keep hitting buttons and laughing at daddy because he has to start over after they screw up the transaction.

Ever tried to complete the transaction from memory because, thanks to the little rat, the screen is in Korean and you don’t feel like starting over?

By: timmaguire

timmaguire — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 20:16:00 +0000

The unlimited ride was all about getting people to use the card when they preferred tokens (the card itself is all about making it easier to raise fares). Once people got used to the card, they jacked up the price to essentially eliminate the unlimited card without the PR fallout of actually eliminating the unlimited card.

These days, it’s a bad deal even for most New Yorkers who ride the subway to work every day.

As for worrying about the per-ride running out, every time I use it, it tells me how much I have left so I never get stuck and I don’t fill my per-ride card any more often than I would fill my unlimited card.

By: GawainLavers

GawainLavers — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:55:00 +0000

“An average trip costs MUNI over $2 per person (light rail is about $3, cable cars about $7).”

If that’s true, then given that bus and light rail (including the F line) are $2 with 90 minutes of free transfers, and the cable car costs $5 (albeit with no transfers) it sounds like MUNI is the one getting screwed, with the exception, perhaps, of the monthly passes.

Of course, public transit should be heavily subsidized. In fact, much more heavily subsidized.

By: zippy_monster

zippy_monster — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:35:00 +0000

Keep in mind MUNI is trying pretty hard to screw its riders. An average trip costs MUNI over $2 per person (light rail is about $3, cable cars about $7). MUNI pays BART about 90 cents per trip. Yet they charge, what, a $30/mo premium for a monthly pass that covers BART and MUNI (vs the MUNI only pass)?

The real bonus, for the less ethical amongst us, is that Clipper cards still let you carry a negative balance. If you’ve got $1 on your card, you can still get a trip anywhere on MUNI (except the cable cars). Toss it away when you hit -$1.00, and buy a new one next time you’re in the subway. Combined with nearly non-existent proof of payment enforcement and drivers that will often hand out 4 hour transfers, I wouldn’t ever worry about not having money for MUNI.

By: Maureen Geoghegan

Maureen Geoghegan — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 18:21:00 +0000

I am pretty sure that the math works better in Chicago. The 30-day pass pays for itself on your 39th ride (assuming no transfers). That means, if you use your 30-day pass for the first time on August 1, and you only commute to and from work every weekday, you are getting free rides on the 28-30, not to mention anything on the weekends. I think it’s well worth it.

You can also use this option with your Chicago Plus card instead of doing the auto-refill.

By: TipsyGypsy

TipsyGypsy — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 17:26:00 +0000

The other night my friend was treating us to pizza and beer after helping him move. We walked in and he said to the cashier, “I’ll take 8 slices of the day please”. She looked a little dumbfounded. No one had previously figured out that this was cheaper than ordering a large pizza. Plus we got our pizza right away and fresh out of the oven!

By: sota767

sota767 — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:16:00 +0000

I always get the 7-day unlimited pass when visiting a city. It might be a bit more expensive than a la carte paying but I’m already stressed trying to figure out how to get around. I don’t want to have a pocket full of change to deal with too.

By: Tavie

Tavie — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:54:00 +0000

Man. I wish my work paid for it.

By: Symbiote

Symbiote — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:41:00 +0000

In London with an Oyster Card it’s possible to set the card to recharge automatically (“Auto Top-up”). Mine is set to add £20 whenever the balance falls below £5. The ticket gate (or the thing on a bus, it works everywhere) makes a different kind of beeping noise when this happens.

It’s also possible to have a travelcard, and cash, and auto-topup.

By: noah django

noah django — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 06:02:00 +0000

really? “noah” *and* “d”? there’s too many noahs these days, ugh.

By: technogeekagain

technogeekagain — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 04:56:00 +0000

In Boston, you can recharge the Charlie Card on any bus or at any subway station. (The busses still take cash, but I believe putting it on the card first gets you a slight discount. Note that the discount is *not* applied to the paper ticket, which is effectively a “soak the clueless tourists” tax.)

By: noahd

noahd — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 04:40:00 +0000

Don’t you figure how often and how long you would otherwise wait in line—especially with children—into your math?

By: victorvictorian

victorvictorian — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 04:37:00 +0000

all of the above not to mention taking the bus. i always buy a weekly except when i know i’ll be out of town. speaking of the bus, have you ever run for a bus in the rain only discover that your Metrocard is empty/expired and you don’t just happen to have $2.25 in exact change in your pocket and the bus driver is a total jerk? believe me it sucks, but not as much as the fact that for some reason NYC busses only take change; no dollar bills. the greatest city on earth can’t even figure out what every other city in the civilized world has done for years.

By: Palomino

Palomino — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 03:23:00 +0000

Yes. In some situations, a card saves time, and not a small amount either, due to available express gates/turnstiles. For me, that has value.

By: mocon

mocon — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 03:02:00 +0000

In addition to the convenience factor mentioned above, sometimes you have to figure that the transit authority just needs the money more than you do.

In St. Louis they do.

By: usonia

usonia — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 02:27:00 +0000

When I worked in Manhattan (and lived in Brooklyn), I’d make at least the break-even going to work 5 days a week and doing errands & visiting & whatnot on the weekends. Now I live within walking distance of work & rarely even get to take the subway, so I usually just get $10 re-ups whenever I have to. I end up spending about $20/week at most.

By: usonia

usonia — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 02:24:00 +0000

Bus-to-train (or train to bus, and SOME bus-to-bus) gets a transfer. With a metrocard, it goes automatically (within 2 hours, or sometimes one or an hour-and-a-half). If you pay cash on the bus, you can ask for one, but more times than not they give to a bus-to-bus transfer “by mistake”.

By: usonia

usonia — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 02:21:00 +0000

It is an incredibly walkable city. The bulk of manhattan is a fairly simple grid, which is nice. Before I lived here it was crazy and daunting, but now if I’m between chinatown & 34th, I walk. Chinatown to 60th, I’d be more inclined to train it.
I can also totally see taking the train a LOT while visiting, absolutely.
This is how we exhaust visitors.
Interestingly, despite the chaos of ALL THE TINY STREETS, I also found London to be similarly pedestrian (in a good way). They put out maps at about the interval you start feeling lost. With an AtoZ, we didn’t take the tube a whole lot.

By: ryuthrowsstuff

ryuthrowsstuff — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 01:13:00 +0000

Yeah transfers technically exist in NYC but in practice not so much. The few times I’ve tried to get one I was told no. So perhaps another reason to go unlimited in NYC.

By: rocketpjs

rocketpjs — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 01:11:00 +0000

Works out about the same in Vancouver, but you have to buy a monthly pass or packs of 20 tickets. They really stick it to the one-off point of sale riders though – tickets are way cheaper, and passes if you ride a lot.

Unless you are like me, and use your fresh new $110 monthly pass once, then absent mindedly toss it in a garbage can after getting off the bus, as if it were just a basic ticket.

By: ryuthrowsstuff

ryuthrowsstuff — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 01:10:00 +0000

The cards are refillable so that $1.70 just gets the new total when you refill for whatever amount. That’s actually one of the points of the bonus system, reduce waste by prompting people to refill. The one time a card expired on me with some cash still on it it was like $.35, which far less than the 7% freebees I’d gotten in using it for how ever long they last.

By: ryuthrowsstuff

ryuthrowsstuff — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 01:02:00 +0000

The math as far as NYC go was far more forgiving in the past. Last time they changed pricing they sort of restructured things to favor people who live and work in the city, where as in the past it was intended to be more tourist friendly.

By: Mordicai

Mordicai — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 00:21:00 +0000

I do my twelve without breaking a sweat; that is just commuting to work & then an average of one more roundtrip a week. I might be lazy on the weekends but I’m not (on average) THAT lazy!

By: Mordicai

Mordicai — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 00:20:00 +0000

Or eTrack or whatever it is called.

By: Rootboy

Rootboy — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 00:16:00 +0000

You can refill metrocards, you know, so you don’t lose the odd change. And when they expire, you can take them to an MTA agent to transfer the balance to a new card.

By: Scott Frazer

Scott Frazer — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 23:58:00 +0000

Chicago would be similar math, but they throw a bit of a monkey-wrench in with they way they handle transfers. After an initial charge of $2.25 to board, the next swipe within 2 hours is considered to be a transfer and cost only $0.25. So if you time your trips right, you can manage a round-trip for just $2.50

Also, Chicago got rid of the bonus when adding more than $20 to your card, which blows, but they do allow you to tie it to your credit card so that it auto-refills when it gets low.

By: Daemonworks

Daemonworks — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 23:55:00 +0000

You’re definition of “a lot” is very different from mine. Admitadly, I don’t live in or anywhere near NYC, but anyone that uses transit as their primary way to get around isn’t going to have any difficulty wracking up an average of 12 trips a week. Assume five days of work or school, and one social activity, shopping trip or what have you… that’s 12 trips right there.