Brain is melting, melting from ORCA

RantWoman concedes that it is still a skadillion degrees outside. Quite possibly RantWoman should just step away from all technological vexations. In fact, RantWoman might do well to order her household minion to peel her a grape and fetch her another damp rag for her overheated brow. Alas, new feline staff excels at making RantWoman feel like a kitten getting cleaned but is no good about peeled grapes and fetched cloths. More to the point, RantWoman is back to interacting with ORCA!!!!

RantWoman guesses she should be glad to have progressed from lines at the end of the month downtown to an actual ORCA account with a properly registered ORCA disabled pass. Now RantWoman can hide from the heat in the underdressed privacy of her own cave and have to think of some other way to get exercise. Arguably, RantWoman could have contented herself with installing next month's disabled pass, but no, even if RantWoman is still sitting on some other vexing questions she figures no one has time for yet, RantWoman would never want banal routine. While logged in to her ORCA account, RantWoman made two discoveries: a record of every occasion her ORCA card has been swiped and a fare conundrum that makes her head melt faster the more she pokes around trying to make sense of things.

RantWoman is both intrigued and on the verge of being appalled about the record of all her ORCA transactions. RantWoman notes that the transaction record shows both the bus route number and the coach number. RantWoman thinks this could be wonderful when she is seized with needs to complain, to offer commendations for example about calling the stops, to make observations related to security, to fly off the handle about a driver on a cellphone or MAYBE to track down urgently-needed lost items.

RantWoman is also enough of a data jockey to understand that there is gold in all that thar transaction info, service-planning gold, route management gold, marketing gold, and probably some way or another fool's gold too. On the other hand, RantWoman watches enough TV cop shows and has read enough dystopian fiction to be just a little bit creeped out. Mostly RantWoman wants to know that her individual personal-identifier tagged transaction data is managed very scrupulously. RantWoman wants to know this, but the weather is too hot and RantWoman has gotten too bogged down in fare headaches to think of obsessing about tackling more than one set of outrages at a time.

Fares, you ask? See RantWoman did not start out looking at all her transactions just for quaint historical interest. RantWoman was checking out her ORCA wallet and her ORCA wallet was missing quite a bit more money than RantWoman expected. On one hand this may make up for the wallet missing less money than expected at the time of last month's check. On the other hand, the missing funds relate to RantWoman's rides on Link Light Rail and there are several points to make RantWoman's brain melt with or without the heat wave.

During RantWoman's tenure on the SE Seattle Transit Connections Sounding Board, the subject of fares on Light Rail was hot and emotional. People, especially people who use disabled passes were outraged: previously on a Metro disabled pass with a sticker one could go all the way to the airport. With the opening of Link and the advent of ORCA, people quite resented the idea of having to pay more for the same service, say the ride from downtown to the airport especially if there is no cheaper alternative.

RantWoman also specifically remembers, at the time the Transit Connections Sounding Boards' recommendations were presented to a King County council committee that there was public recommendation--from a paid official source, not just some scruffy member of the public-- that people still be able to go the whole length of Link on one disabled pass. RantWoman took this to mean without additional payment, and took the info this way a second time when a different paid functionary mentioned the same fact. RantWoman also did not obsessively verify what exactly made it into legislation, regulations etc.

RantWoman is of two minds about this. "But they SAID...." On the other hand why would Light Rail be any different from the mystery of one zone in Sound Transit land? For RantWoman is sticking to the first option.

The more vexing problem comes back to RantWoman's disabled pass, the vagaries of ORCA, and the no man's land between Metro's administration of disabled fares and Sound Transit nightmarish tangle of fare zones.

In Metro logic, a person with a disabled pass who needs to travel regularly through more than one zone can get a Puget Pass with the face value needed for the two-zone or intercounty or ferry or whatever fare for half the price paid by non-disabled users for passes of the same value.

The Sound Transit page suggests quite clearly that this should be the case for Sound Transit travel too.

http://www.soundtransit.org/Riding-Sound-Transit/Fares-and-Passes/PugetPass-and-Others.xml

However, this policy does not appear to be implemented in ORCA. RantWoman was speaking with someone who has a disabled pass and wanted just to buy a pass for the number of Sound Transit zones she regularly travels in. RantWoman herself really loves passes for freeing her from worry about loose change or how long transfers are good.

If it turns out, for instance, that RantWoman really is supposed to pay every time she rides Light Rail, she will have to seriously consider getting a pass with the right face value. RantWoman can be predicted to whine and moan and howl about a percentagewise proportionately huge effective fare increase on some routes. However, RantWoman is in a position to consider buying the higher-value pass. Well, she is in a position to consider this if ORCA correctly implements the fare tables shown on Sound Transit's pages. Many other people RantWoman knows are not in a position to consider this, but they get to speak up on their own behalf.

RantWoman is likely to send this question off to ORCA customer service people. Then she will resume pursuit of something much simpler--like particle physics, quantum mechanics, or just rocket science.