Happy fare hike Monday. Actually, the fares jumped over the weekend, but most of us wouldn’t have noticed until today.
So now that we have a $2.25 fare, your pants just got heavier. How so? Well, if you buy a single ride with a $5 bill, you’re going to get back two dollar coins plus 3 quarters. Awesome.
God help you if you paid for it with a $20. That’s 17 dollar coins plus 3 quarters.
$20 bill goes in, 20 coins come out.
Granted, even a few days ago, it still would have been 18 dollar coins…but still. It’s pretty insane.
The bigger problem is going to be the little old ladies that have to break out their coin purse full of nickels to get up to the 25 cents. You know there ain’t no damn way grandma is going to break another dollar if she doesn’t have to.
At least the machines don’t take pennies!
SUBWAYblogger 
You can still only get $6 in change from a Metrocard Vending Machine
http://www.mta.info/metrocard/mvms/index.htm
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Considering that only 9 percent of all riders pay the single fare ride with no discount on their MetroCards, I don’t think this is going to be nearly as big a problem as you make it out to be.
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@Chicken Underwear: Totally true…I was going for it more as a joke than as fact. On second read, I think the joke may have been a swing and a miss on my part.
@Benjamin Kabak: Very true. And I always trust subway statistician BK’s numbers. But c’mon…you know what I’m saying about the little old lady and the quarters. Maybe that’s more of a bus problem though. Now they need to have 9 whole quarters in their coin purse…GASP!
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Those little old ladies can’t handle the steps in the subway anyway. The problem really is that we’ll be waiting on longer lines to get on the bus as they fumble with nine quarters at the fare box!
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Naw, it is gonna be really bad. The little old ladies pay half-fair. Is that $1.125? Not only are they gonna demand to put pennies in. They are gonna want their half cent change!!
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I just read the new rules. The old ladies pay $1.10
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They should place a chart on the machines and near the booth for customers who are not buying an unlimited card but want a regular metrocard with odd amounts of rides on it (OTHER AMOUNTS) it should be like the chart they use to have when we had the tokens. This way if say a customer wants 14 rides they would know exactly how much they would have to pay.
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As far as the quarters and change I just wanted to add that you can put up to 30 coins in the machines for one transaction. If you try to put more than that they will all be returned to you. If anyone has a lot of change and wants to get rid of it they can go to the full service booth and piss the station agents off. They have to accept the change, even the pennies (but not too many of them) , give them some work to do, hold up the line at a real busy station while they count all your coins, the booths already have a lot of change since the fare increase, so they really don’t want or need your change.
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