daihard

daihard, 5 days ago

@Andres4NY Just curious, do you go through a turnstile when you leave a station? In Japan we do both as you enter and leave, kinda like tapping in and out.

daihard, 5 days ago

@darwinwoodka @rejinl @Andres4NY One big difference is that the fare gates in Japan are open by default. It closes only when a passenger taps a card with an insufficient balance, inserts an invalid ticket, or (very rarely) tries to force their way through without paying.

As for the entry point, the fare gates there are bidirectional. Whoever enters it first will go through. It can be an issue if you're trying to enter the station against the flow of passengers who just got off the train trying to leave. You wait for one passenger to go, but by the time they are through, the next one is already in the gate, so you'll end up waiting for a while to get in.

daihard, 5 days ago

@rejinl @darwinwoodka @Andres4NY And it looks like the MTA chief is onboard with Adams. That's really too bad.

Reminds me when my mom and I took the train together when I was back in Japan a couple of years ago. The fare gate closed on her as she tried to go through before me. She got furious as she believed she had enough money on her transit account. A station employee came to us. She showed what she believed was her transit card in her hand, which, it turned out, was a different (non-transit) card. That was an embarrassing moment for both of us. 😅

daihard, 5 days ago

@darwinwoodka @rejinl @Andres4NY My horror story about transit in Amsterdam goes back to 2008, when they still had the strippenkaarten (strip cards). I had been using them backwards without knowing it because it was an honour system and no-one checked my card until I was a week into my trip. And one day, a train station employee caught it. He just bluntly told me I was using it all wrong, and that I'd have to get a new card. I somehow managed to get out of it. That was my first experience with the "Dutch directness." 😅