"Peak-of-the-Peak"

[LandoverDivision]

Ok I discovered this at Silver Spring a few days ago. Metro says this on a sticker on the farecard machines: "Peak-of-the-Peak will not be charged during the AM" or something like that. Yet they still have the AM times with the price on the farecard machines. I don't get it are we getting charged for AM or are we not?

[WMATAGMOAGH]

Not yet, but eventually you will be.

[Sand Box John]

As Oren said "Not yet, but eventually you will be."

The reason why has to do with limited memory storage capacity of the EPROMs in the faregates. The code writes at WMATA are working to get the programing code down to a size so it will fit on the EPROMs. This is also one of the reason why the barriers don't respond as quickly as they use to when using SmarTrip cards.

[Tritransit Area]

Oh geez...with all of these issues one almost wonders if its worth the trouble.  Slow faregates are no good...

[SchuminWeb]

Indeed.  Slow faregates are no good.  I've found the new slower read speed to be really frustrating...

[WMATAGMOAGH]

It isn't that much slower than it used to be.  Let's say you lose 2 seconds per ride (1 on entry and 1 on exit), so that is 20 seconds a week.  Is your time really that valuable?

[btconet]

2 seconds isn't necessarily so valuable in my book. However...

Just missing a train at the entry station as a result of that delay and then missing an infrequent connecting bus on your exit station could certainly be.

As well, I would think that a station with significant alightings could see their faregates jammed due to the longer transaction times.  I'd hate to be the 8th person in line trying to get out of the gates and get an infrequent bus that's leaving in about a minute from the bus docks.

[SchuminWeb]

It tends to clog up the faregates when a whole bunch of people get off at a station like Dupont Circle in the morning since it's not exactly "pow, pow, pow" anymore with people getting through.  That's the kicker.

[WMATAGMOAGH]

I was at Navy Yard last week after a ballgame and didn't find the "delays" there to be unreasonable. 

2 seconds isn't necessarily so valuable in my book. However...

Just missing a train at the entry station as a result of that delay and then missing an infrequent connecting bus on your exit station could certainly be.

As well, I would think that a station with significant alightings could see their faregates jammed due to the longer transaction times.  I'd hate to be the 8th person in line trying to get out of the gates and get an infrequent bus that's leaving in about a minute from the bus docks.

Definitely a frustrating situation, but I think there is a fair chance that the person you describe in that scenario would still miss their bus with the faster processing times.  I think more time would be lost from processing paper cards and people who don't run their card through as soon as they are able and rather wait for the display to go back to INSERT FARECARD/TOUCH SMARTRIP.

[Sand Box John]

WMATAGMOAGH
It isn't that much slower than it used to be.  Let's say you lose 2 seconds per ride (1 on entry and 1 on exit), so that is 20 seconds a week.  Is your time really that valuable?

You are forgetting to count the 2 seconds you lose for everyone in the que in front you. In the long run through put is reduced.

[SchuminWeb]

Precisely.  That's where buses get missed.  The train dumps a hundred or so people on the platform at once, and they all have to go through the gates, and that causes lines at the gates.