Thursday, July 28, 2011

Caltrain fare overhaul

I'm really interested in Caltrain ridership getting together and pushing Caltrain for a fare system overhaul.

See - SF Weekly's criticism of fare enforcement with respect to Clipper follies. Most of the issues are - as has been discussed ad naseum - a function of the fact that Caltrain's fare structure does not work well with the limitations of Clipper, nor does it exploit the huge advantages Clipper should provide.

My primary interests are
1) Removal of 8 rides and replacement with a 15% discount for Clipper users
2) Removal of zone structure and replacement with distance based fares - at least for Clipper users (relieving Caltrain of the burden of overhauling their ticket machines).

See also Aaron Kitashima on 8 rides

And a previous writing on the topic

If people are interested, please join the Caltrain (JPBX) Google group for an open discussion that I hope will result in a proposal we can bring to the Caltrain Staff, JPB, and MTC.

The google group is here

2 comments:

John C. Baker said...

Agreed on all counts. In fact, there should've been distance-based fares from the moment they stopped selling tickets on the trains and switched to automated ticket museums. Put in your destination station and hit buy, it's that simple.

Mikesonn said...

Of course I forgot to tag on today and had a bitch of a commute.