Crazy Fingers

Peter commented on blogchelsea that he has had similar problems with one of the turnstyles at the 23rd Street Station. (I posted about this here and here.) He singled out the one on the far right and in retrospect, that’s the one I habitually use.

This is what I’m doing to try to improve the situation:

1. I won’t use the turnstyle on the far right.
2. I’m using a PATH Quickcard at the PATH turnstyles, rather than a metrocard.
3. I’m keeping both fare cards behind one of my business cards in my wallet, to avoid scratching the magnetic strip.
4. I’m keeping the magnetic strips for the two fare cards apart, and away from the magnetic strips on all the other cards in my wallet.

This is bad debugging. There are too many variables in play. If this solves the problem, we won’t know what caused the problem in the first place. Also, if I don’t have a problem, it only proves that no problem occurred yet. It doesn’t prove the absense of a problem or that anything was fixed. I suppose, if these steps eliminate Metrocard failures, I could reintroduce things one at a time (i.e., use a Metrocard for the PATH) and see when the problem starts again, which may help isolate the cause, but I don’t care that much. I just want a reliable way to get on the train.

Supporting the bad turnstyle theory, someone on nyc.transit commented:

I had more metrocards die on me in 2005 than any other year. Well,
none ever did before. The conclusion overall has been the machines
are degenerating, not the cards. They’ve been in there ten years already.