Commuter Rail Tickets Via Smart Phone Discussion

The phone does not need to be connected to cell phone service or wifi to use the ticket. Only to purchase the ticket, which should be done before you board the train.

I used the app for the first time today.

Purchasing experience: Very easy. Entered in some data, quickly looked up my stations, ticket was bought in two minutes.

One thing I was interested about was how the T would make sure a ticket wasn't reused. Once you activate the ticket, you have 90 minutes to use it. In theory, I suppose you could go from point A to point B and back again, if the conductor didn't look very closely, but the e-ticket also does list the originating and destination stations.

One frustrating thing: As I was buying my ticket to go home, a call came in just after I'd hit the confirm purchase button. Even though I declined the call, the purchase process was terminated. I had to go through it all again. I'm hoping they can address that quirk in another build.

So, it's March 7th, coming up the end of the first three months (in my opinion the definition of "early" in terms if the year) and the update to allow monthly passes with subway access is no where to be seen or even an update on it.

We have seen fare gates all over the system converted to non-pass through which seemed to be an indicator, but the commuter rail connections have been like this for months. Will we ever see the full monthly pass in 2013?

This seems like its dead in the water for monthly passes with subway/bus transfer. The new press release states no transfers and the faq's doesn't mention "coming soon" anymore.

Gee, what a surprise.

Is the mTicket app down for anyone else this morning? All I can get on it is "Could not connect to the server" errors. Had to actually buy a paper ticket for the first time in forever.

Things like this are why I'm still wary of ever putting a monthly pass on the app - it's not 100% reliable, always leaving you with the need for a backup. Good thing I had money.

Not sure about an outage but as long as you have made the purchase before you board(not stressed in the APP), you do not need any sort of connection to use your ticket. So if you have a monthly pass it will always work.

sery2831 wrote:Not sure about an outage but as long as you have made the purchase before you board(not stressed in the APP), you do not need any sort of connection to use your ticket. So if you have a monthly pass it will always work.

Good point regarding the monthlies - I hadn't thought of that!

I don't normally have tickets pre-purchased for when I don't have a monthly (like right now) though. Maybe it'd be a good idea to start...

You do purchase it before you board though? Conductors do not have time to wait for phone purchases, it is actually requested you activate the ticket as soon as you sit down.

No problems yesterday afternoon. Bought my ticket at about 4:30 and activated it about 10-15 minutes later.

sery2831 wrote:You do purchase it before you board though? Conductors do not have time to wait for phone purchases, it is actually requested you activate the ticket as soon as you sit down.

Oh of course. Going inbound I usually buy it while at the station waiting for the train, or before I leave the house. Going outbound I usually buy it either on the subway or while waiting at North Station. Then activate it as soon as I'm in a seat.

I just meant I don't purchase tickets until it's time for me to go, rather than buying a bunch in advance and keeping them on my phone and using as needed.

I used the app last week. Although I don't think MBCR had anything to do with the app, it shows up on my statement as "MBCR CMT RL TKT" with the address as "LOCAL SUBURBAN COMMUTER PASSENGER TRANSPORATION-FERRIES" and the phone number as the MBTA's main phone number (617-222-3200).

The CTPS for 2015-17 has data on payment mode on the CR (not including RI)

Overall for CR:
77% of rides are monthly pass
21% of rides are single ride
2% are "other" (confused?)

Of the monthly passes:
99% of monthly passes were commuter rail/ferry passes (the remainder are the 2% of Lowell Line and 9% of Fairmount Line riders that use LinkPasses)

Of the single rides:
10% paid full cash fare on board (so 2% of ridership)
13% paid a reduced fare (cash on board?) (about 3% of ridership)
37% paid with mTicket (about 8% of ridership)
40% paid via CharlieTicket (about 8% of ridership)

The data is also broken down by line and station (or sometimes sets of adjacent stations) for anybody looking to do more analysis.

In terms of proportion of single ride tickets that are mTicket, the top stations are

JFK-UMass 74%
Roslindale 61%
Littleton 60%
Lowell, Lincoln 56% (tie)
Brandeis-Roberts, Middleborough-Lakeville (tie) 55%
W Roxbury 54%
Grafton/Westborough 53%
N Scituate 52%
Chelsea, Worcester, Natick, Forge Park (tie) 50%
Haverhill/Bradford 48%

Could the "other" fares be round-trips, if the conductors still sell round trips on board?

No, those would be issued as two single-ride tickets.