TRANSFER
TRANSFER
Originally uploaded by thehoneybunny. here's what i like about the minneapolis/st. paul transit system:
you get on the bus and pay $1.50 (or $2 during rush hour). the buses have the ability for you to feed in your dollar bills, so you don't always have to use change. as soon as your fare is paid, up pops the transfer ticket. you take it and find a seat.
the awesome thing about these transfer tickets is that they are good for 2.5 hours. but what's even better is that you can use i on any bus going in any direction as many times as you want for the two-and-a-half hours. YES! that includes the same bus route! so if i wanted to ride the #18 from my house to downtown 6 times in 2 hours, i can! and then if i wanted to hop on the lightrail, i can do that, too!
remember how everyone was pissed off that the bus fare went up from $0.75 to $.90 in boston? i'm paying $1.50 to ride the bus here, which seemed excessive at first. BUT then i realized how completely awesome the transfer system is. you just feed the ticket in every time you get on the bus and it'll spit it back out for you to take with you on the next bus. or, it'll keep it if your time has expired. it's totally worth the $1.50. not lame paper strips that they hand you in boston that are only good for one transfer within 2 hours and NOT on the same bus route. and you don't have to worry about the drivers being "out" of transfers since they pop up after your fare is paid. i always hated that about boston. if the driver can't be bothered to hand you a flimsy piece of paper, s/he would say (with a total blank stare) "don't got no more". classy.
so the transfer cards are one of the things i love about living here. it makes getting around on the transit system so much easier. like on the night we got totally lost and ended up in the 'burbs. we were set with bus fare because we had these tickets. if we didn't have them, we'd be forking over $1.50 every time we got on a bus...and we took about 6 buses that night!