December 10, 2007
MTA Fare Hike Webinar in "Progress"
Worst Webinar Ever!
Our MTA Webinar lunch plans are frozen at the moment. We sort of wish the "technical difficulties" prompt was accompanied by a "signal problem" or "police activity" reference to complete the atmosphere.
The MTA just released the new fare hikes for unlimited and pay-per-ride Metrocards. The base fare will remain at $2, though only 15% of the riding population buys the base fare.
Update:
We didn't see any questions or answers during the time we were logged onto the MTA webinar. Right before the webinar closed, the screen showed this:
Somehow, a shot of the computer desktop (Windows!) from the person who was organizing the webinar was posted. Weird! Since we don't know anything else about the webinar, here's a blast from August, when the August 8 rainstorms (and trees) caused flooding that effectively shut down the subway system and the public's desire to have answers totally overwhelmed the MTA website.
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An admonishment to "PLEASE BE PATIENT!" would be appreciated, too.
I can only assume that tons of people are trying to participate, but let's face it, when the MTA has facts and figures about ridership, they'd have to know that the demand to participate in an online forum would be high.
"We'll take your silence as a vote of confidence. Love, the MTA"
I just submitted a new question:
In light of the fact that you can't even run a simple Webinar, how can we trust you to run an entire transit system?
for all us pay-per-riders, i've done the mta fare calculus to get as close as possible to NOT having those loose pennies lying around...
buy pay-per-fare metro cards on your credit card in multiples of $17.39 (for lower amounts)or 17.40 (for higher amounts)... that will work out to almost exactly $20 in rides (10 rides)... so keep these nice round numbers in mind when buying a pay-per-ride card...
a 15% discount creates some bad decimals, to ALWAYS be exact you'd have to have multiples of $17.391. Last I checked, the MTA doesn't take payments in the .001 range.
here is your math...
$17.39 = exactly 10 rides
$34.78 = exactly 20 rides
$51.27 = exactly 30 rides
$69.60 = 40 rides + 4 cents
$87.00 = 50 rides + 5 cents
that last option sounds like the one I'll be doing the most.
yeah i logged into the web seminar and it was worse than waiting for the C train.
Thank you wickedced for doing the math. I've been wanting to get around to doing that all day.
I wonder if the MTA will do the math for their clerks and make it possible for someone to hand over $40 and say, "Twenty rides please" and get $5.22 change without a hassle.
I wouldn't mind the increase if the MTA put half naked female pole dancers in every car 24/7.
That was the most informative Webinar ever.
the Webinar is just like the A train was this morning- barely functional; I finally had to get a $10 cab so that I would not be (even) later for work.
"we apologize for the unavoidable delay"
On top of the fact that maintaining the base fare (while raising unlimited ride fares and lowering the discount on pay-per-ride cards) is a hollow gesture, that 15% thing is fuck-stupid.
So was there any way to see how many people were signed into the webinar? Sometimes you can see the log of people signed in.
i didn't see anything on the screen that said how many people signed in, but in an email from the mta today, "hundreds of individuals" tuned in. they also claimed that "virtually everyone" was able to hear the presenters. funny, not a single person i spoke to saw anything.