Sometimes the technology ain't so hot

So as you might have figured out by now, I'm not at home. I've returned to Boston for a whirlwind of conferences, meetings, and other bureaucratic bits and pieces.

In the six months I've been gone, the MBTA has managed to make bus riding an even more unbearable experience than it used to be. How? By incorporating new technology.

They've produced a new "charlie" card that you pretty much need for any kind of getting around the city. They used to just have them for the T, but now the buses are all converted. You can still pay cash, but you can't transfer, so if you're going any distance, you need one of these cards. Problem is, buses are built different than subway stations.

At a subway station, if you're behind somebody whose card isn't scanning, you go to the next turnstile and presto! you're in. In a bus, there's only one entrance.

Yeah, you see where I'm going here... so some guys pass won't swipe means the rest of us are still standing outside the stupid bus waiting to get on. On top of that, the card swipe is also slower than the old bus pass swipe, or the passing over of a transfer.

Before, at some of the busier centralized stops, they would open both front and back doors, and you could show a pass or transfer to get on through the back doors. That way you load passengers twice as fast. That's not possible now, and even through the one door, things are slower because the cards don't scan well. I've seen it happen a handful of times in four bus rides, so you know it's happening all over.

When it gets bad enough the driver just waves the person through. I wonder how much money the MBTA is losing in equipment malfunction after they obviously spent a significant chunk of change converting the whole thing over?