Revenge of the New York MetroCard Machines
Eric Konigsberg and Sewell Chan report for the New York Times on failures on Monday and Tuesday of New York City MetroCard machines that were unable to handle credit and debit cards. They write: "The malfunction raised questions for riders about not only the efficacy of the MetroCard machines but also the larger notion of the American commercial culture’s movement toward an increasingly cashless existence." The outage also provoked this New York Times editorial complaining about the overall design of the MetroCard machines.
This is yet another case of an administrative entity (in this case the Metro Transit Authority) relying on (internal or external) entities who do not understand electronic transactions and in particular: debit versus credit versus self issued/stored value cards.
I learned this the hard way; now whenever I hear the words "bam", "snap" or some other phrase to describe the wondrous and magical event of "zapping" someone's card and assuming things are over--I run!
In this case, I would be especially appalled considering the other "electronic mishaps" that the Metro Authority has had.
Bureaucratic entities always seem to fall into this trap, as they choose to rely too heavily on one solution path as ' it is easier to manage'. Relying on a single commodity as a solution (in this case electronic transactions) is just about as foolish as say ohhh... I don't know, running the world biggest economy predominantly on oil.... the majority of which is imported?
I think you get the point.
Posted by: Frank McBride | July 31, 2008 at 08:58 AM