Posts Tagged “public transportation”

The folks who think the bible is a fairy tale have come up with their own stranger than fiction scenario.  The British Humanist Association has raised over 100,000 pounds (far in excess of their original goal of 5,500) to fund something called the Atheist Bus Campaign which will buy ad space on London buses proclaiming,

Ok, disclaimer and attempt at flame prevention time.  This is an incredible feat of online fundraising.  The comments and discussion generated are pretty entertaining.  Props to the humanists and atheists for asserting themselves in the marketplace of ideas.  It’s their money, they can do what they want with it.

So…  what in the holy name of Richard Dawkins are they thinking?  If you had a $200,000 media budget (or even $20,000) to get your ideas out there, would you spend it on bus ads?   For people claiming the high ground of logic, reason and science, these atheists are putting a lot of faith in some of the least effective and most unquantifiable of marketing methods and a self-congratulatory message that’s hardly going to win anybody over.

I know lots of smart marketeers read limeduck. What would you do with a wad of cash to promote atheism?  Viral social media campaigns?  Street teams?  Direct mail?  I’m off to London next week and maybe I’ll catch one of these buses and get some good ideas.

Let me call to your attention two excellent maps that in my humble opinion should make sweet cartographic love and spawn a mashup of some sort. This confluence of maps, blogs and public transportation has got the limeduck quacking loudly.

First up, Boston Blogs’ map of Boston blog by T stop.

Still in beta, this excellent map is simply the MBTA’s official subway (and Silver line) map with a link at each station to blogs tagged with that T stop. It looks like Davis square is the belle of the ball with 25 blogs as of this writing, and my own dear Central has a respectable showing at 15 blogs. The Red line is not surprisingly the bloggiest MBTA line.

My second nominee is Unmapped Boston from Unmapped Cities.

This is a completely new view of the Boston area. It combines major streets, subway routes, and most importantly, a pretty comprehensive list of the squares that define Boston neighborhoods, all while remaining substantially but not literally true to geography. The map is available on paper ($20, get one today, I just did!) and is a beautiful work of design.

Here’s my immodest proposal: Unmapped Boston should hook up with Boston Blogs to create a cartographic listing of Boston area blogs by square, and not just the squares that have T stops. Sure, there’s lots of geotagging going on and you can find blogs by longitude and latitude, but I think I prefer a neighborhood-centric blog geography. It’s not so specific that it sets off privacy alarms, and it lets neighbor blogs self-identify their location to the area that suits them best.

So don’t forget, list your blog at Boston Blogs and check out Unmapped Boston, and if you like them, maybe encourage them to get together sometime for a coffee. No pressure.

There it is, proof that my crackpot calculations work. If you are irritated by particulars of the new MetroCard pricing scheme, you can still buy a card with an integral number of rides. But make sure you use plastic or have exact change, lest you end up with a handful of golden dollar coins featuring Paul Giamatti’s John Adams’ bug-eyed visage.

I like the vaguely mystical overtone that you have to know the secret code and apply it in exactly the right way in order to receive the magic number 18, for life. (חי)

In not entirely unrelated news, if you don’t visit New York City often enough, or worse, don’t ride the subway often enough, you might occasionally find that one of your MetroCards has expired while still holding value. Horrors.

If your card is less than a year expired, you can trade it in for a new one using one of the handy machines around the stations. If your card is older than a year, you’ll have to get one of these claim forms and mail in your ancient card. Ask at any friendly former token booth.

As you may know, the MTA in New York recently restructured fares.  They raised the price of monthly and weekly passes and altered the discount structure for buying stored-value cards, but kept the base fare the same at $2.00.

It used to be that if you put at least $10 on a metrocard, you’d get a 20% bonus – buy five rides, get one free.  Now, the deal is that you get only a 15% bonus but you get it for spending as little as $7.  Spend $7 and get a bonus of $1.05 for $8.05 which is four rides and a nickel.  Buy three and a half rides, get half a ride free and a nickel?

This nickel is driving some people nutty. 

I’m not sure why it would bother you if you keep refilling the same metrocard, but I guess some people like to throw away empty metrocards and don’t want to waste a nickel, or they’re just picky about those things.  (Hey, I shouldn’t throw stones, I like to sort my M&Ms by color before eating them.) (I like to, I don’t have to.)

I imagine this might be seen as a conspiracy by the MTA to retain nickels from millions of commuters and thereby pay off the ex-governor’s ho tab balance the budget.  But there’s a not too difficult solution:

$17.39

That’s the magic number.  Buy a $17.39 metrocard and you’ll get a 15% bonus up to an even $20.  Having trouble remembering that?  Here’s a list of some stuff that happened in 1739.  If that’s too much, and you’re a heavy user, try spending $40 on and getting bonused up to $46, an even 23 rides.

Or maybe the MTA should give you the option to donate all those nickels to charity.  But you can bet that if they ever reduced the discount to eliminate the annoying nickel, people would complain about losing it.  Now its just another odd bit of city living.

UPDATE:

I should have checked my facts. I should have checked my facts. I should have checked my facts.   On the way back from writing this post at a cafe, I tried it.  And you know what?  It did not work.  Why not?  Well, it turns out that you can’t buy a metrocard for an amount that’s not a multiple of $0.05 – the same annoying nickel.  If you up your bid to $17.40, you’ll end up with $20.01, a smaller excess, but excess nonetheless.

Here is an updated table of metrocard amounts that you can purchase that should result in integral numbers of $2 rides.  Note that I have not tested these yet.  (You’d think I would have learned, but I was too eager to get to redacting to check them all.)

Buy    - Get    - Rides
$15.65 - $18.00 -  9
$24.35 - $28.00 - 14
$31.30 - $36.00 - 18
$40.00 - $46.00 - 23

Perhaps I’ll make up stickers like the above and plaster them on the metrocard machines.  Power to the riders.

I am back on the system. Please clean up your act.

But seriously folks, I took a bus to work and a train back today, and despite all the petty annoyances, it felt great. I’m sure I’ll fall back into rail rage sooner or later, but if I can find that article I once read that indicated that a big part of transit system delays could be traced to passengers on the platform crowding the doors before people could get off, and people in the train not clearing the doors for people to get on, I’ll be sure to blog about that here.