Monday, May 20

[soid]

Woke up around 8, hardly. Running to the train by 8:20, without coffee. The train was quite empty, running on time. Reading the Subway photo essay book. It starts with a lot of “els” – elevated tracks, predecessors of the underground. Before coming to the office I grabbed EBC (egg, bacon, and cheese) on a roll, and then got to the office by 9:20.

Many cops were standing in the lobby; metal detectors were installed at the gates. Lots of news in the morning. Firstly, an article was published about us on the website called streetsblog.org. People were discussing it in Slack. A funny piece of local journalism; almost a corruption investigation. In the scoop journalism style, the piece claimed we're ditching our OMNY contractor – OMNY has been behind the new turnstiles on the New York subway, that allow paying for the ticket with an Apple watch, phone, or by other modern payment device. Those were deployed in 2019 by the contractor Cubic, who are behind the development of ClipperCard in the Bay Area, and a similar transportation payment system in Boston. Since 2019 they have been unable to deliver even basic changes for years, not to mention some major requirements. The article claims they were acquired by private equity firms, were unable to keep their developers, basically running in maintenance mode and now charging us increasingly large fees, just because they can, while nobody is able to make changes to that system anymore. Typical story. Good article; I liked it; and even subscribed to the author on Twitter, though I don't use Twitter anymore.

Second, the cops in the lobby were there to check people entering the building for public hearings live-streamed on YouTube. They announced what the article claimed hours before, that were ditching the OMNY contractor. Then various people complained: a man calling out for some stations not announcing arrivals for blind people; an autistic man explaining that the system is too complicated for people with disabilities. The representative of the organization called "Passengers United" sounded more cheerful and to the point. Then other reports from management: almost 3/4 of passengers use tap-and-pay at the central stations, but on the outskirts, the majority still pay with MetroCard. MetroCard is 30 years old, from the 90s, when it replaced tokens. Now, with the breakup with OMNY, MetroCard stays with us for longer. I listened to these reports for a while in the background.

I just thought how "professionally" this all announcement is done: news of this terrible corruption were leaked in the morning, then announcement of ditching this rogue contractor. Everyone is happy. A touch of a professional politician here.

From the other news, they say copper is at record highs with a copper penny now worth 3 cents.

What did I do for work? Finally, animated the button. What else did I even do? Seems like so many pieces moving, but nothing finishes. Looked into the VPN setup, but didn't finish it. Nagging about DNS records update. The day went fast. I went back home by 6.

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

Ha, this explains the whole mess with subway payments in a variety of countries and states. Clipper was horrible. You use the train or not, they charge you monthly. To me, tokens are the best. But probably it takes too much support, physical things.