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A Twitter Data Scientist Hacks San Francisco's Subway Fares

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Re: A Twitter Data Scientist Hacks San Francisco's Subway Fares

#41

Post by phillmv »

jaredsohn wrote: post #10
nchuhoai wrote: post #2

I like the technical ingenuity, but do we really need to hack this system? I'm not debating the legitimacy of BART's cash flows, but IMO, the distance based system is the fairest system I can think of, closely correlating usage of resources with payments

Agreed. Also on the personal level, while it could save you some money, you're not only offsetting mass transit funds to the taxpayers (or other passengers), but also taking a risk that the card you are trading for is from where they say it was from and that it contains the amount of money the other person claimed. You're also potentially (haven't thought through all of the details yet) losing out on the convenience…

>Also on the personal level, while it could save you some money, you're not only offsetting mass transit funds to the taxpayers (or other passengers)

I know people felt personally slighted with the Google Bus protests, but with stuff like this it's too easy to criticize "valley behaviour".

Re: A Twitter Data Scientist Hacks San Francisco's Subway Fares

#42

Post by usaar333 »

The effects of a nonlinear, with respect to distance, fare structure.

In other news, a rich and poor person could save a lot on taxes by 1099'ing a middle class person, taking the tax deduction, and paying for the middle class person's increased taxes. Just as illegal of course.

Re: A Twitter Data Scientist Hacks San Francisco's Subway Fares

#44

Post by ars »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #19
GuiA wrote: post #8

When I first moved to SF as a poor grad student doing a summer internship, your Clipper card could go in the negative (for example if you had $2 on it and took a $5 route, you'd be at -$3). Getting a new Clipper card was only something like $1.50; if you took the Caltrain/BART often (expensive routes), it'd almost always be advantageous to buy a clipper card with as little cash on it as possible, toss your card away…

I always thought it was pretty grim that Boston's "Charlie Card" was named after a man who was 'trapped' in the subway system because he couldn't afford to pay his way out.

Charlie is not a real person, it's a song.

Re: A Twitter Data Scientist Hacks San Francisco's Subway Fares

#45

Post by bri3d »

Why is the perceived outcome of the publication of this strategy or "fare sharing apps" a realignment of fare rates?

I think a negative outcome like biometric fare cards is equally as likely.

Note that I don't think either outcome is probable and also find the entire publication and article entirely ridiculous.

Re: A Twitter Data Scientist Hacks San Francisco's Subway Fares

#46

Post by michaelt » 

  This, he writes, might force "monopolistic" public transit
  systems to become more efficient by eliminating the
  possibility of route swapping--like by charging a flat
  rate per trip, as New York City’s Metropolitan Transit
  Authority does.
Or they could adopt a fee per minute of travel, or a fee for entering or exiting a turnstile, as regardless of the ticket swaps the number of travel minutes and turnstile turns remains constant.

Alternately, if they switched to an unmarked electronic ticket, so you couldn't tell if someone was offering you a valid or invalid ticket, the information asymmetry could cause bad tickets to drive out the good.

Re: A Twitter Data Scientist Hacks San Francisco's Subway Fares

#47

Post by ColinWright »

In the UK train fares are not a metric. Specifically, sometimes travelling A to B then B to C is cheaper than getting a ticket direct from A to C. For example ...

Just about two years ago I had a return journey from near Liverpool in the North West of England to Exmouth, in the extreme South West. The simple return ticket was about £115. However a return Liverpool to Cheltenham was about £50, and a return Cheltenham to Exmouth was about £45, so I saved about £20, and didn't even have to change trains.

It's against the terms and conditions to scrape the official web sites for fare and timetable information, so clearly I wouldn't write a script to do that and then search for optimally priced combinations, even though I spend about £9000 every year on rail travel and could save about £3500 a year.

Re: A Twitter Data Scientist Hacks San Francisco's Subway Fares

#48

Post by 650REDHAIR »

Little off topic.

When I first moved to SF @ 19 I looked quite young and carried my laptop in my backpack. I didn't have much cash and would pay the student/child fare to have enough $ for food.

I even knew the name of a couple local high schools and their teachers so that when I would eventually get called out I wouldn't get caught in the lie. I felt pretty bad about this "hack" for awhile, but I wouldn't have been able to eat without it. Thanks MUNI for subsidizing me.

Re: A Twitter Data Scientist Hacks San Francisco's Subway Fares

#49

Post by at-fates-hands »

oh_sigh wrote: post #30
at-fates-hands wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the hack is buying one ticket and then going to the back door and letting in 10 of your friends.

When I was young, those crazy kids would buy two tickets and enter the theatre. Then, one person would exit with both stubs, give one to a friend waiting outside, and then repeat the process for as many friends as one had.

Now that is a true hack. Brilliant!

Re: A Twitter Data Scientist Hacks San Francisco's Subway Fares

#50

Post by at-fates-hands »

peterwwillis wrote: post #38
at-fates-hands wrote: post #20

"Out of 60,334 of these route pairs, Haque says that switching mid-route for 4,666 of them could save at least $1 together." Two things. First, that's an awfully low number of people who could take advantage of this hack. Second, You're going to save $1??? Not sure the savings to effort ratio on this one really makes sense.

If saved both ways that's $2/day. Assuming you worked 40 hours a week and got two weeks vacation (which most minimum wage people don't, and part timers don't get any paid vacation), you'd save $702 a year, or about 4% of the post-tax income for a minimum wage worker in San Francisco. Not everyone gets to work 40 hours a week. A recent study showed as many as 39,000 San Franciscans could be getting paid below minimum…

Waaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too many points in this argument to address so I'll try to keep it on point to my assertion its now worth the effort:

So you save $2/day for a week = $14 (I was generous and gave you all 7 days even though most people I know work 5 days and even minimum wage workers don't work 7 days a week, every week, for a full year)

$14 x 3 remaining weeks in a month = $42 $42 x 11 remaining months of the year (this means they're doing this every day without fail, both ways, for a full year and successfully finding some to trade with everyday. Not sure those odds are in your favor, but whatever.) = $462

Considering you pointed out the high cost of living in San Francisco (I'm going to skip over the fact of why minimum wage workers would live in such a high rent area, but that's a different argument), I would expect $14 wouldn't go very far.

As such, having to hustle every single day, without fail for a full year to save what I consider a minimal amount of money that could be saved either by sharing a BART pass, biking, using a hybrid car, or a myriad other means that don't require a constant effort on my part. I would simply look to other ways to save money. Like someone once told me, "Work smarter, not harder, fool."

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