San Francisco MUNI (subway) turnstile fail
 

Not sure if this is a repost, but man, talk about engineering fail. :rofl:

Coles Notes: SF puts spends millions of dollars on subway turnstiles that can be defeated with the wave of a hand.

omg lolz

lol pretty retarded system

LMAO

they fucked up

wave of a hand.... wow..

just wait. when translink puts it in in a few years they'll have some major fail.

Translink should have never switched to the retarded "magnetic strip on printed paper" system we are using now.
The Octopus system has been around for HOW LONG? And they still went with an ass backwards system.

- Paper isn't sustainable
- Sliding that card into a reader isn't quick
- It's not reloadable, meaning people CAN just pass that card. (no signs of no fare transferring, no fare transferring prevention garbage cans. how much money would that have already saved?)
- Translink doesn't get to collect interest on preloaded money.


I don't think people in that bureaucracy know what they are doing.
They've got their heads up their collective asses.
I don't doubt another catastrophic cock up will happen here.

Man I was just down there!!! If this would have been up a couple weeks ago.. damn

Well said Culverin!

rich

Wonder which company was responsible for the faregates down in SF. If they're one of the proposed companies in Vancouver, we'd had better not choose those goofs.

lol everyone has to turn sideways to get through XD

you probably don't know how much a wireless smartcard technology is going to cost. I agree it is the best system, which is upgradeable in the future... but It is MUCH more expensive than the current system we have. talking about saving money from having less signs and garbage cans is really chump change compared to the overall scheme of things.

who here has been to Toronto? I like their subways there, but their stupid tokens are the worse things in the world - I'm always scared I'll lose those stupid coins.

Either way, we're moving towards a wireless smartcard technology, and it will be put in place in 5 years or something like that.

hacked !!!

Had we switched to electronic fare payment all those many years ago...
We would definately have made back our money by now.
- More tourist friendly. (they won't leave thinking vancouver is assed backwards, not-tourism friendly).
- Wasted travel time when people are fishing out their coins while getting on busses.
- Turnstyles = decreased number of fare evaders. (Just think of this compounded over the years we have had the skytrains since, we've had 2 new lines built since!).
- The cost difference of changing over to magnetic strip, then having to remove every single machine and retool our entire electronic infrastructure within the next few years.

I was just out of high school when they switched over the mag-strip, I had never been to asia.
I only knew about the Octopus system from descriptions.
Even without post secondary education, I recognized that translink screwed up big.


They continue wasting our money.
Glass bus stops?
Sure they are architecturally pleasing, but just look at the concrete area around them when it rains, the only dry spot is where the BENCH is protecting the ground from rain.
I work in the Arch/Engineering industry. The architect that came up with those designs should be shot.
How he managed to sell it to translink just shows that we are being lead by a collection of idiots with neither common sense nor forsight.


Having only left the continent for the first time this year, I finally realized how tourism unfriendly vancouver is.
It would cost less than a single one of those bus stops to populate a 500 meter radius around each skytrain station with "Skytrain This way" signs.
That "T" sign tells me absolutely nothing, it's not unique, and it's not symbolic. They definately don't guide lost tourists to skytrain stations.


Sorry for the rant, but translink has always rubbed me as a prime example of how poorly my tax dollars are being spent.

stick it to the man

Translink has their head in their ass so far that it comes back out of their mouth... so here we have an infinite loop of retardedness that all tax gets dumped into

I've been around Europe quite a bit, and seen many different systems, and sometimes still find translink's system better.

of course, there are pluses and minuses to everything. I like translink's magnetic strip - in that it does actually allow for 90 minutes of travel. Quite a few cities I go to don't allow for transfers, and charge separate fares for each bus. Sure, London buses are cheap to take - it's only about $1.80 per journey, but if you have to change 2 buses to get to your destination - you're paying $4.40 for a single journey. And that's only because the GBP has dropped to ultra low exchange rates.

Paris has one of the most extensive subway lines - and guess what, they still use the magnetic strips. I've used a 5 day pass, putting the little paper pass through the reader multiple times a day, and never had an issue with it getting worn out.

Many buses around Europe still don't have an electronic change collector on the bus - you stand there while the bus driver counts your change and may or may not give you change. London bus driver might not let you on at all, if you're even short 20p, while translink drivers would still let you on.

Turnstiles would help with the skytrain - but there will always be fare evaders. about 2.5% of people were found to have evaded fares in 2007 - 5.4% on skytrains. But if people wanted to evade fares - it's not hard to do with turnstiles. Even some of the best systems - people can squeeze two people in at a time, or just jump. It will cut down on fare evaders, but at what cost?

Not saying that Translink is perfect by any means, but there's no point at looking back and just keep on whining about should've, would've, could've. They are moving to a smartcard system. But there are pluses and minuses to every system - and translink may not be the best system in the world - but it is far from the worst.

its only a matter of time before someone tries to pull that trick, and gets their hand crushed by the swinging door, then go on and sue the city of SF, PROFIT!!

few days ago
the 24 hour newspaper mentioned there might be a potential upgrade for the translink system

they might make something similar to the 'octopus system' from hong kong or the 'oyster system' from london, uk.

again, this is conservative canada, :rolleyes:
it might be a long time before our noob system will soup up.