Ron Newman has a new hobby.
In the past several weeks, the Red Line commuter has noticed a pile up of CharlieTickets scattered on the ground of MBTA stations. Instead of chucking them in the trash, he decided to check to see if they still had value. What he found was that riders frequently ditch their tickets without tapping their value.
Newman began a mission: Collect as many tickets as possible.
As of late last week, the Somerville resident had 30 tickets worth $55.
“People don’t understand you can add value to a ticket,” said Newman, who commutes from Davis Square in Somerville.
His next step: Deposit the value onto one CharlieCard and donate it to a charity for someone in need.
Today at South Station I picked up a ticket that had an original value of $10 and when I checked it there was $8 on it.
3 comments:
Ahhhh my favorite dumpster diver has made it into the metro!
Who would want to add value to a ticket? Anyone riding the system that often, and who knew that much about the new fare structure, would be using a card to get the discount.
On the other hand, if it were possible to combine tickets at a vending machine, or transfer value from a ticket to a card...
When I started this 'project', a lot of the tickets I found had been bought in 2006. These are easily recognizable because they say "ADULT Stored Value" in big letters. They had not been used up by the time the fare increased, and now had $1.25 left on them, not enough for a final ride.
What makes more sense -- throwing it away, or adding 75 cents to it and using it up? Obviously many people didn't understand that they could do this.
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