Actually, MetroCards had several advantages over tokens (once the kinks were finally worked out). One, they allow free transfers between buses and subways. Prior to that you had to pay two fares. This put people who didn't live near subway stations at a disadvantage. Two, although not yet implemented, they could in theory allow lower off-peak fares. This would benefit the system by encouraging people to make trips at a time when the marginal cost of an additional passenger is close to zero.
No doubt, there are advantages. Still, doesn't change the fact that the initial MetroCard trial run was a miserable failure. Ben Franklin once came up with a more streamlined and efficient version of the English language. Significantly better in fact. It too was a miserable failure. (Though in that case it was due to adults not wanting to re-learn a language they already knew and had been speaking all their lives.) Someone also came up with a more efficient keyboard set-up than the old QWERTY layout that we're all familiar with. Also, not a huge success at all. Sometimes folks just prefer the old system.
As far as transfers go, I did what many others did when they could. Travel either exclusively by subway or plan the route by using buses so you could transfer from one to the other. Not always ideal. But just the way it was.
I'm sorry, but the City is just too damn greedy to offer off-peak fares. The system is so ridiculously mis-managed. Just today I waited nearly half an hour for an off-peak Q43 bus. When it arrived, guess what? . . . Yup, another Q43 directly behind it! It's not just the Q43. We both know what a sad and pathetic joke it has become with the above scenario played out countless times a day.
When I was referring to telecommuting, I wasn't talking about face-to-face interaction between businesses and potential customers. I was referring to doing the many back-office jobs where a person sits in front of a computer screen all day from home. Besides being better for the workers, businesses would save on office space. The surplus office space could be reconfigured as affordable housing, something which is sorely needed in NYC. It's a win-win situation for just about everyone. I would say at least 75% of jobs are amenable to telecommuting at least part-time. Probably over half can be done completely from home. I do complex electronics projects from home, often interacting with my customers solely by email. If I can do a job like this from home, certainly someone can do data entry or billing from home. You just need a change in mindset where employers insist on watching over their charges like hawks. If the employee isn't doing the job they're being paid to do at home, it'll be obvious pretty quickly. The hard truth is most jobs aren't creative and really don't require any face-to-face interaction with fellow employees.
You raise an excellent point that I failed to mention. I'm sorry, but there are way too many folks out there who would screw around if they worked from home. Yes, sadly, there are folks out there who need to be watched in order to make sure they do their jobs properly. Obviously, there are those who are professional in what they do. But imagine how very inefficient it would be if there was a major screw up? In an enclosed work setting, a supervisor can deal with the matter right away. But if that doesn't exist then what is he to do? Get in his car and drive to the employees house who screwed up? Or, even worse, hop on a plane? With a centralized location where everyone has to report to from 9-5, that type of issue doesn't come up. No need to hunt for the guy who messed up. Also, in bigger companies, if you need to coordinate efforts with other departments, it's much easier from a centralized location. But the biggest issue once again . . . I just don't see folks changing their mentality (collectively speaking) and turning away from the time honored notion of dealing with others face-to-face.
I fully agree about the token clerks. The oft-used excuse for keeping them is that they could call police in case of an emergency. I say if you're going to be paying a person's salary, then why not just station a police officer there who can help instead of a token clerk who (maybe) will call for help if they have nothing better to do.
A couple of days ago, the vending machines inside a popular station were out of order. They put someone into the old token booth to service customers. OH! She was not happy. She refused to say a word. Refused to even give a fake smile. Reminded me of the old days. But definitely not in a nostalgic manner. Yeah, I prefer dealing with the vending machines. They have far more personality and are a lot less rude.
I fully agree about metal toys and really metal anything. I all too often see plastic parts substituted for metal even for parts that get high stress. You just know these parts will break prematurely, and then you'll need to replace the entire item. Where's the efficiency in that?
I buy my niece and nephew stuffed animals. No plastic junk from Uncle Mono! When they get older, I'll buy them books, lights, watches, etc. The only thing made from plastic I'll hand them are their own library cards.
Automated checkout? I'll be happy once we have that perfected in that you can push a shopping cart of items past a scanner and they all get checked out instantly, without needing to put them on a conveyor and scan them one at a time. To me it's adding insult to injury to make me wait on a line to give a store my money. It's even worse now that many stores are cutting their cashier staff to the bone so that you'll even have long lines during off-peak hours. So bring on the automated scanning if you can do an entire cart at once, and also let me pay in cash if I want to . That shouldn't be all that hard. Automated checkout where you need to pay be debit card are just stupid. I never use debit cards. It's all too easy to lose track of how much is in your account if you make many small purchases each day.
Call me crazy, but I prefer to deal with real human-beings.
Automated checkout . . . Okay, why bother even combing my hair, taking a shower, putting on underwear and other clothes, heading outside . . . When I can just buy stuff online with a few keystrokes. Oops! Home Depot and those other places jumping on the automated bandwagon better hope and pray that other consumers don't discover what I just did.
And when I'm done shopping on my computer, I can do all the stuff above, head out the door, and grab some lunch from the little cafe just down the block from my home. The one that definitely isn't automated. The one where they know how I like my coffee, I get greeted with a smile, Lily serves me and she's very nice. And when I'm done, I hand her my money. And Lily's soft feminine hands carefully place my change in my hand. Yeah, the most basic of human contact. But she's a sweet woman, and spending just a bit of time chatting with her while I enjoy my lunch . . . That's worth stepping out the door for. An automated experience?? Bah! Why half-*** it? Log on, buy what you want off the internet.
That's something I hope kids tomorrow never get to miss out on. Basic human contact with someone worth getting to know a bit.
. . . you do know acceleration rates rarely make much of a difference in trip times, don't you? Accelerating to highway speed in 8 seconds instead of 30 seconds might mean an average speed for the trip of 64.9 mph instead of 65 mph. And quickly accelerating away from a green light only to stop 2 blocks later at another red, as many idiot drivers in this city do, makes NO difference at all in travel times. Acceleration is highly overrated. IMO vehicles should accelerate a lot less rapidly so they can't achieve dangerous speeds on urban roads. If you need longer highway entrances for safe merging so be it. That's a small price to pay for greater safety. Now you'll have idiots who accelerate up to 60 mph in one city block just because they can. Maybe the best of both worlds would be an acceleration lockout which limits acceleration rates to something like 1 mph/sec on local streets, but allows full bore acceleration on highways. With GPS, that shouldn't be hard to do. We could even cap speeds at the speed limit on local roads with such a system.
Yup, fully aware of what you mentioned above. Thing is, raw power isn't about sustained speed for the duration of the trip. Raw power is about being able to get your car either out of the way or where it needs to be much faster than normal. You encounter a busy expressway, your car does 0-60 in 14.5 seconds . . . Oh yes, you ARE going to be white-knuckling it down that entrance ramp! I know! My old Ford Escort was that slow. My current ride does 0-60 in 6.5 seconds. Oh yes! HUGE difference. I no longer have to worry about building up enough speed to enter that expressway without possibly being mowed down by a faster driver as I try to merge. My 2nd day of owning my sports sedan, the manual mode slipped out of my hand. By the time I got it pushed back properly, a truck was bearing down on me. I hit the gas and got the Hell out of the way. There are times when you need that raw power. I loved my little Escort. But she had no power. It was one thing, but it was a major thing. One thing for sure, if I ever get rid of my sports sedan (no chance in Hell) I'll definitely replace it with something at least as powerful.
