on van galder regional busses you need to sit close to the front to get a wifi signal. they have the router up there. middle to back and you might connect but wont get any data

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

DC same thing. Pre paid card. You swipe to get on the platform and you swipe again when you get off at your stop and you are charged for your ride. No second swipe and you pay for the ride to the end of the line. To me it's a no-brainer.

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"I honestly don't see a good bet on the board here."

That's great, but how is this done for Metra in tiny suburbs that have outdoor stations? It really isn't feasible to seal off the entire platform, there will always be a way out.

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You fence off the platform. Of course cheaters can walk up the tracks or try to climb the fence but then you arrest them for trespassing.

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"I honestly don't see a good bet on the board here."

Maybe the Metra police can finally do something.

That idea still doesn't seem very feasible to me.

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It isn't. Been mentioned before but rt 59 and Naperville stops have 11 car express trains service those 2 stops only several times each morning .1600 people getting on, trying to squeeze them through turn styles then someones card fucks up and delays the line of people ,meanwhile dozens miss the train because of the holdup. There'd be fucking riots.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Tri-Rail platforms aren't fenced off. You just tap in and out on the platform.

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the system is fine. just a bunch of complainers here. I say bring back the bar cars.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Now there is an idea. Metra really wants to increase revenues? Ban carry on/open alcohol, and have a bar car on each train.

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i rode a metra up and back for free over the weekend. the conductors never bothered to come up and ask for any $$$ or anything, and while i did have $$$-in-hand ready to go i mean once you make 75% of the trip without paying you're like "ok then, in the immortal words of the simpsons "disco stu don't advertise" and keep calm and ride on. these albatrosses will be going by within 7-25 mintues of their scheduled time like clorkwork no matter if they take my $$$ or not.

there's not much i can do short of being like "HEY ASSHOLE COME OVER HERE AND TAKE MY MONEY" but since he's not doing that, call it a hunch i'm the only one here who has had random latenight metra conductors randomly flip out on him for no reason ("DON'T THREATEN PEOPLE ON MY TRAIN!!!!" people i was talking to: "huh? what the hell are you talking about?" so i get off at the next stop casually weaving through ~6 metra cops who were boarding the train prolly looking for me as i got off. $25-35 cab home ensues. or that one time those wannabe-guaradians-angels motherfuckers did the epic cockblock from hell when i picked up that eastern-bloc chick who was so dismayed at the american brand of the human condition that the first thing i ever heard from her mouth was "I WANT THE STREETS TO RUN RED WITH THE BLOOD OF THESE GODDAMN INFIDELS!!!!" --- yes, it all balances out on the metra trains.... of life) --- so yeah, "life is a bitch so fuck it" - nas.

so yeah, i'm a horrible person, granted, so i'll be surely waiting for god to come and strike me down for my crimes against decency.

and some sort of a mandatory check in system with a farecard right when people get on would prolly be the best thing to do, but i reckon the conductors don't want their responsibilities/pay/etc undercut.

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Id think they looked at that


I imagine the insurance and liability way outweigh the potential gain

If you lived in Barrington, you had a bar car until 1996.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/7547061@N02/2557109308/

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

I didn't pay inbound (again, there was some long delay and we were on the center track for some reason) and they didn't even come by for tickets until right around Irving. I was upstairs napping with my head on the window so I guess they either didn't see me, they didn't ask, or they didn't care. Most definitely had my ticket punched outbound because it was a late-night train, like you said, and I didn't want to piss off a third-shift brother.

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welp, per usual CH is nothing if not ahead of the (bell? cuz you're pavlov's dog like that) curve with this metra thing, as there's a wonderful propaganda piece front and center on the cover of today's tribune saying something rather bond villainish: "METRA RIDERS WANT ALL TO PAY" (which hearkens all kinds of awesome mental images of don dipshit from elgin getting on the train, seeing somebody get on for ~3 stops for free, and thinking EVERYONE'S GONNA PAY FOR THIS.... MWAHAHAHHAHA!!!!)

in the piece it starts off with john jerkoff from glencoe talking about how the system is outdated and something needs to be done because "i dont know how much $$$$ they're losing but it has to be at least 10% of their total revenue. conductors can't do this! (but obviously rugpeers can)" and then the article goes on to make it seem like some sort of populist movement, as it keeps reiterating that there are "numerous complaints" about "free riders" and then even goes one step further to propagate metra propaganda by talking about how they had PLANNED fare hikes (with the inference being that they would be partially there to combat this) but those good guys @ metra didn't do it.... any hey, they're prolly gonna give you your 10 ride pass back (nevermind the cognitive dissonance of metra riders wanting everyone to pay 100% of the time, they want that incentive/cookie to play ball and commit to 10 rides in the form of, gasp, A FREE RIDE! but i thought that was the problem here?) and dontcha know that some riders (cough cough assoles from elgin/harvard/zion/etc) ask the metra people why they even have zone-based fares? because they don't do that on teh CTA.... and hey because nate numbnuts from zion has to pay $6-7/+ to ride the train all the way from bumblefuck into the city, why should some asshole who's only gotta go 4 stops get to have a cheaper ride?

TL;DR = the whole thing is being painted as a faux-populist movement that riders are DEMANDING (the mid-section secondary/cont. headline = METRA RIDERS: NO FREE RIDES ffs) and the whole thing strkes me like they've already figured out their battleplan for the future and it no doubt involves some sort of paradigm shift (the front page has a little box that says SMARTPHONES ARE THE ANSWER! THEY'RE LOOKING INTO "VIRTUAL VENTRA CARDS"!!! FAIRNESS AND EQUALITY FOR ALL!) and this is merely the process of conditioning everyone to accept the changes in the future. a lot of people who weren't aware there was an epidemic of non-fare-payers (hey if CNN can call ebola a fullblown epidemic right now why not this too?) are now getting their first taste of the shape of things to come via this fluff piece where it's like "YOU METRA RIDERS ARE ALL DEMANDING IT! WE ARE HERE TO LISTEN TO YOU! NO MORE FREE/CHEAP RIDERS, IN FACT WE ALWAYS ENCOURAGED YOU TO SNITCH ON BAD CONDUCTORS AND FREE RIDERS!"

that last line there is just part and parcel to the whole "if you see something say something" movement that started with 9/11, aka the "snitching" movement that baltimore originally had the balls to stand up to and say NO (which is why it's a horrible/deplorable city, ask colonel justice Himself: dan bernstein) which of course hearkens back to good ol nazi germany (cuz the boomer geheration was the first generation to be raised with nazi germany being the ultimate epitome of evil / everything-"we"-stand-against) which eventually became russia (look at those evil communists!) where IIRC they both (tho mainly russia) had societies where people were encouraged to rat each other out for anything potentially subversive about the state, and in fact doing such was seen as an admirable/stand-up thing to do. just like how in 1984 the kids are trained by the schools/system to rat out their parents' potentially subversive activities in order to establish a bond between kid and state that is even stronger than the bond between kid and parent/s (and hey wasn't winston smith's job to go back and edit history books to make sure they 100% advocate the commonly-held-beliefs of "the party" and consequently "the contemporary public" ??? yeah there's SJWs out there who want to invoke "change" to the process of archiving books and stuff, no doubt with a purportedly-benevolent raison d'etre of using our advanced contemporary perspective to make sure that history isn't twisted into being slanted towards an archaic belief system, you slave-owning/indian-killing asshole conquistador of a white person you)

so yeah, once again i know i'm TL;DR and busting out the seams with tangents which is totally my MO and all of that.... but CH was totally ahead of the story that made the front page of the tribune today. there's clearly some ventra envy (cuz who doesn't want to charge people $5 to get the mandatory card before they even can put on the $$$ for a ride, with part of that hustle being to subsidize the cost/s of sticking everyone with a rushcard.... i mean hey rushcards will bend over backwards to send you a card au gratis, with them eating the distrobution costs to give you a card where they're the middleman getting like 2-5% of your $$$ for the "convenience" of not having any of that damn universally-accepted money around and instead having the safety/piece-of-mind of having all your $$$ on a veritable credit/debit card) AND OF COURSE, ventra is designed to slowly break people down and condition them to the fact that bus/transit passes are now getting way more personal because ventra will be damned if it's going to show you the balance remaining on your card because it wants you to get caught with your pants down sometime and end up being in one of those "oh shit" situations where you gotta shell out extra $$$ with no transfers that makes you look like a mong in front of all of the other good litte riders who followed papa ventra's orders and hooked the card up to their bank account / credit-or-debit card and has the card automatically reload with a bunch of $$$ when it gets low enough. and then the only way to check your balance is to stop and go to the machine at a proper CTA station and check it out, or better yet go online and "register" your card where it wants your name / address / phone # / soul to give you the only information (remaining balance) that was pertinent enough to show on the old card system.

now you have this beautiful color-filled touch-free card system that can do all this stuff.... except show you balance information, because when i called the ventra ppl up about this they were quick to tout that they can't show me my transit balance information because "THERE'S A DEBIT CARD ATTACHED TO EACH CARD! WE CAN'T RISK SHOWING OTHER RIDERS YOUR BALANCE!" nevermind the whole part where the proprietary/arbitrary debit card is 100% separate from the transit system and therefore even if you have $1000 loaded up on your ventra card's debit side, it doesn't bleed over to the transit side to cover your ass. cuz you figure it would make all the sense in the world to say "hey i have $500+ on the debit card side of things so when i get low reload my card from that" --- but nope, not at all, much like if you have $100 on the transit side of the card you can't simply use your ventra card as a debit card, which again would totally make sense...... but of course, heh, once you load that $$$ onto the card it's theirs theirs and all theirs.... they aint gonna give any of it back to another entity.... THEIR HUSTLE!)

and then when i pressed ahead i got them to say something like "well since we encourage people to load more $$$ than they used to on their transit cards, we don't want undesirable people to see that the card itself is worth an significant amount of money" which then hearkens the question: "hey, why don't you tell the system to show me by balance when i have under-$10 left or something? it's entirely possible to do that since the transit system on the bus / at the station knows how much $$$ i've got on the card and it can issue a low balance warning.... i mean hell you can have protocols just to say LOW BALANCE WARNING or anything that lets e know i've gotta give you more $$$ ASAP..... and the ventra phone operators conceded that i had a point and they would pass it on to their supervisor/s (*wanking motion*) because what they couldn't say is that the system is designed to be one where it wants the most information about you as possible. it wants to know that this is YOUR CARD and thus YOUR TRANSIT HISTORY and etc cuz with ventra cards you can go onto their website (where even without the debit card they want your name / address / phone # / etc) to check balances.... but that's a pain in the ass because in the heat of the moment if you're running late to get out the door to work and you're rushing to get on teh bus/train and you know you loaded $20+ on that ventra card a week or two ago and you think it should be ok.... it's all about that one time you're fucked up and you show up late to work or hold up everyone on the bus so you get to be "that guy" du jour who gets group-shamed into realizing "hey i should acquiesce and give them direct access to my bank account and/or credit card so this never happens again!"

and of course, once they've got that mainline into your financial werewithol they're gonna use it to pump a bunch of $$$ on the card before a lot of people could even think about using it, because the tollways set the precedent with i-pass: why bother to pay as you're using something when instead you can condition people into giving you $50-100/+ at a time before they even use it? put the onus on the people to actually use what they pay for, just as long as you're upgraded from collecting smalltime $1 fares into getting payments of $50-100 directly.

so yeah i reckon "virtual ventra cards" are a-coming. they saw how the city is hustling with those cards (again, $5 to get one before you ever put on transit value, and a lot of this is to subsidize the costs of this rushcard-that-nobody-asked-for built into the card, which is of course the impetus for the anti-consumer-benefit of the card because showing you the only piece of information pertinent enough to show you via the classic system for the last 20-30/+ years or whatever, transit balance, is impossible because you have to protect this sacrosanct debit card on the ventra! card.

and of course paying for everything with your computerphone (cuz i absolutely LOATHE the whole "hey you're smart because you use a computerphone.... let's call it your SMARTPHONE, you little einstein you) is the future and the way because while the lunatic fringe is whacked out about the inevitable microchipping of the population, man, instead of doing that use OBAMAPHONES(TM) and every other program meant to subsidize SMARTphones to the masses because a RFID microchip has jack squat diddly shit on what a cellphone can datamine about you and your life. that's how you're tracked and followed and/or monitored, and by keeping people afraid of microchippings as an utimate anti-privacy endgame welp they're not stopping to think about how their SMARTphone is selling them out every step of the way and thensome.

of course all of this will hearken the good ol boy response of "if you're not a scumbag you have the $$$ to sign up for the auto-payment services and never worry about that stupid bullshit po'boy sini is worried about. why would you care that your transit passes are hardwired to all of your personal information and keeping a nice and tidy little transit log of every trip you ever make tied to all of your personal information? if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" and granted, hey, if you like all these entities having direct access to your fnancial accounts and keeping records of your every pubtrans trip well hey now rejoice cuz societal functions are gonna latch on to you like a little leech and pump the $$$ directly, because like this tribune article says YOU DEMAND IT! NO FREE RIDES FOR THE SCUMBAGS! EVERYONE PAYS FULL-FARE LONG BEFORE THEY EVER THINK ABOUT RIDING THE TRAIN!

but yeah, this is how democracy/freedom/privacy dies.... not necessarily with thunderous applause like the star wars prequels would have us think, but with little propaganda pieces on the front page of the paper saying that WE demand this, WE demand accountability.... WE have been snitching on those dastardly people who are causing the metra to be a desperate working-poor-class transportation service.... it's all OUR faults! ron paul warned us that this would happen!

and hey, as contemporary media proves.... all you have to do is say something enough and appeal to people's feelings (cuz on a way lower/cultural-marxisty level there's a big giant societal paradigm shift going on from having knowledge and reason as a premium to coddling people's media/society-driven/created "feelings", just like with common core education one of the head honchos of that program has a quote out there that when a kid says that 4x3 = 11 that might not necessarily be wrong as long as the kid can reasonably explain how they got to that conclusion..... you got that? we're entering an age where 4x3=12 isn't going to be taught as a hardwired fact because a dumbass kid who doesn't know that might have his/her feelings hurt by not knowing that so as long as they can justify their actions they won't be docked points for being incorrect, cuz man if you were a kid who got a D/F on a math test where you got multiplication problems wrong.... man, we don't want to raise this kid up to be a serial thrill-killer because he's so dejected and broken because his special snowflake confidence was shattered at an impressionable age because he didn't know that 4x3 = 12. i mean.... shit, who's to say that = sign is the be-all/end-all of mathematics. it's all about coddling that kid to feel good and like himself and know that there are no hardwired black-n-white facts out there such as 4x3 = 12..... instead we're ushering in age of 4x3 = who cares? as long as you can tell me how you're feeling today)

ah well, when you live in a society where there's people out there claiming that algebra is too rigid for collegiate level students to be forced to take so instead we'll teach 'em "business math" (aka "just plug this into your calcuator... you dont have to know how/why things work as long as you know how to apply the undisputed truth in everyday real-world (retail) scenarios that are increasingly technology-dependent) well c'est la [fucking] vie "as the [fucking] french would say in [fucking] france - eddie [fucking] griffin and i suppose the increasingly fascist/communist/socjus-ist nanny state will just take care of everything as long as you tie them into your core financial accounts.... but hey as the article today served to prove: YOU DEMANDED IT! YOU ASKED FOR IT! YO WANTED IT AND WE ARE NOTHING IF NOT HUMBLE SERVANTS OF YOUR EVERY WHIM AND DESIRE!

and yeah, it all goes back to may 1 2011 where i understood the need for human subjugation. welp you're certainly gonna get that and thensome.... so sit back relax and strap it down and be sure to get your ebola shot (....heh) before you risk a hot date at a fema camp for refusing that presidental order/decree/whatevertheycallit going back to the bush administration about forcing vaccinations on people. updated this july, of course, to make sure that you're branded as a dissenter/subversive/undesirable. society's on a fun path of total accountability where everything is doublespeak and subject to arbitrary feelings of the masses who love to introduce themseves to you on twitter via veritably-RTing your trash just so they could show all of their cool friends "I DON'T ACCEPT THIS KIND OF BEHAVIOUR AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU!" --- but that's another gear-grinding story for another day.... back to you tom (after a quick check of the blackuweather forecast with ollie)

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btw, yes, i know that you're not going to read all of ****that**** 75%+ of the CSFMB. sorry i have thoughts when i have a modicum of caring cycling through me at the moment. we'll work out the kinks and before you know it i'll be circlejerking with <140 character updates / single-emoticon-posts that exist to put most of the misery into commiserate, if you will)

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Of course John Jerk off from Glencoe ™ , who wants all riders to pay will be the first one bitching when he doesn't have his shit together one morning and "forgets" his monthly pass that the conductor made him pay for a ticket because out of the thousand faces the conductor sees everyday, he should remember him because " I take this train everyday and not charge him for the ride

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Is this even a problem?

In all my years riding the train, they've not collected like 3 maybe 4 times because the train was packed like a sardine can and they literally couldnt get thru (probably some safety issues there but that's another story)

If 100.00% of tickets were checked, then people'd be griping about increased labor costs.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Agree . Couple months ago they ran an article in the Trib about a couple conductors being disciplined for throwing a woman off the train for not having money for the fare. Which way do they want it?

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

People without a ticket and with no money to purchase one should be let off in the worst neighborhood on the line, even if that neighborhood isn't a normal stop for that train. That would solve alot of problems I think.

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OK buddy, we're taking you to Crystal Lake!! (gasp!)

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Or they can just do it the Indiana Jones way.

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Good idea. I believe they left her off in that hell hole that is Jefferson Park . She called mommy, mommy complained to Metra and voila, discipline assessed.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Heres the article .

In this violent summer in Chicago, it's the last thing a family would want to see happen. But after a suburban family complained that their teenage daughter was thrown off a Metra train in an unknown neighborhood in the dark of night when she couldn't come up with the proper fare, Metra says it won't happen again.
"It was handled improperly," says Deputy Executive Director Peter Zwolfer.

Metra says its conductors have the option to take the names and addresses of passengers who don't have the proper fare, so that they can be billed later, and that no passenger is to be ejected from a train unless police are present. Until Friday, Metra says, the Union Pacific Railroad, which operates the line, gave conductors latitude to eject passengers at the next stop.
Last month, 19 year old Adriane Falagario was removed from a Union Pacific train after she boarded at Clybourn Avenue and discovered she did not have the proper fare.
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"Pretty sternly, and pretty ice cold, he said, 'Well you can get off at the next stop,'" she said. "He was extremely stern, extremely rude, very short with me from the very second he came up to me, asking if I had a ticket."
"'Go find an ATM and then get back on the train,'" she says the conductor told her. But then she says he confirmed that another train would not be due for another hour.
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"'Yep, in an hour,' he said. Go find an ATM. Make sure you get off at the next stop.'"
In less than a minute, the young woman says the train stopped, and she was ordered to get off at the Jefferson Park station. It was 11 p.m.
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"The train literally went away and I was standing in the dark, on a platform and I didn't know what station I was at!"
Finding herself alone, on foot, wandering a neighborhood she had never seen before, the young woman called her frantic parents, and her father made the trip into Chicago to pick her up.
"Her personal safety was at issue," said the girl's mother, Elizabeth Falagario. "At night, an individual girl, on a train, I don't think, should be kicked off."
Metra says it agrees.
"I believe it was mishandled," said Pete Zwolfer, the agency's deputy executive director. And he said Metra's boss, Executive Director Don Orseno, called the family personally to apologize.
"He let that family know from the top down this wasn't handled correctly, and we apologize, and we're going to improve on that area."
What's more, Zwolfer says Union Pacific has agreed to bring its policy in line with Metra's, putting people off of trains only if police are present.
"They actually listened, and actually immediately changed that part of their policy," he said.
Indeed, Felagario says a UP official called last Friday, apologizing for what had happened, and promising that conductors would be retrained to better understand what options were and weren't available in such situations.
In a statement, the railroad said it's normal practices were not followed.
"The wrong decision was made," said Wes Lujan, Assistant Vice President for Public Affairs. "We will re-evaluate our practices and policies to make sure this doesn't happen again. Union Pacific Railroad and our employees who operate our Metra trains are truly sorry for what happened."

| nbcchicago on Facebook

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Why would Metra even care? Just tell them not to ride the train anymore. It's not like they're paying anyway.

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Stop being unrealistic man. You know they HAVE to pretend to care.

Letting her ride the train for free is bad business for all of their paying customers. Any reasonable person would understand that.

What could be done to alleviate these problems would be to install an ATM on the train. That way customers with no cash will be able to withdraw money to pay their fare. Or change the antiguated system of only accepting cash, and give the conductors the ability to accept CC's.

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But that's not how the world works, is it?

one complaint = fuck everyone else

this seems pretty simple, not sure why they don't do it....they could profit from the ATM fees

Put the ATM in the bar car.

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