Will He Ever Return...

Those of you who are Boston locals know all about this, but the MBTA is currently transitioning to the Charlie Card--electronic fare collection cards. Yes, Boston is finally joining 20th century--considering that New York City has had electronic fare collection since, oh, 1994 or so.

Unfortunately, the MBTA is introducing the cards in a very painful way--piecemeal throughout the system, so that you are only allowed to buy a CharlieCard at the entrance station, and on the return trip, the station does not take it (so you need to buy a token). I know that Perlick, U5 & Co, and I have all experienced this stupidity firsthand. In contrast, the Not Dumb thing that New York City did was to keep legacy token access open for a while (looks like almost 10 years) before they phased them out. I guess that's pretty necessary if you're converting the system over the course of three years (from 1994 through 1997).

Sounds like the final version of the CharlieCard will be RFID-based--sounds pretty cool. Although magnetic stripe technology seems to be perfecly reasonable (NYC MetroCard, Bay Area BART, Washington DC Metro). Also, they are going to be taking the card on Commuter Rail by 2007, which will be useful for me, if I need to bike/train out to the main office in Westford once in a while.

The Wikipedia article and a Weekly Dig article list of some of the rejected names for the card:

One of the rejected names for the farecard system was "The Fare Cod", a pun on both the way locals might pronounce "Card" and the fish that was once integral to the Massachusetts economy, and also a reference to other transit cards named for ocean animals, such as London's Oyster and Hong Kong's Octopus. Another rejected name was T'Go card with the T being the symbol for the MBTA.

...“CharlieCard” is probably a better name than all the suggestions we came up with - the “StopPissingOnMyLegCard,” the “WhereTheHellIsThatTrainIt'sBeenAnHourCard,” the “TheIntercomKeepsSayingDowntownCrossingOverAndOverAgainCard” and of course, the “WhyIsTheHeatOnFullBlastInMayCard.”