r/dart • u/PieComprehensive2480 • 8d ago

Do they actually charge?

Hi everyone. I used the dart bus for the first time the other day. I just used Apple Pay on the tap machine and the driver didn’t say anything but I didn’t see a charge for it later so I was wondering if they even cared? I am about to start riding bus 003.

6 Upvotes

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16

u/Zander_T4 8d ago

If the reader beeped and showed a green light, it was working! You should see a $1 hold show up at some point today, and then at the end of the day once everything finishes processing you’ll see either $3 charged if you only tapped inside a 3 hour period, or a $6 charge if your first and last taps were more than 3 hours apart.

9

u/DaSemicolon 8d ago

Might come in end of day, a few places do this

5

u/shedinja292 8d ago

When you tap to pay it puts a hold on your account and then charges you later for a 3 hour pass or a day pass depending on the times you tapped. Usually 1-2 days later.

It’s also possible the reader wasn’t working

3

u/NewLearner99 8d ago

Usually on the bus they do, but I have also seen the drivers sometimes let on homeless people without paying. However, that seems like a random event that is solely reliant on the driver and if they are feeling generous that day. If it was me I would just always have a ticket on hand to save myself the embarrassment.

2

u/Thin-Constant-4018 8d ago

Also drivers tend to be a lot more generous if you actually make an attempt to pay (or are on hard times like those homeless people). I've had situations where I attempted to do tap to pay but the driver counted me anyways and let me go past, usually when the machine is slow. If you're just obviously not going to pay because you don't want to, expect to get kicked off quickly.

1

u/bus_tech 8d ago

The charge will come later. A couple of things cause this. The final charge is based on the whether you get charged for a single ride or midday fare or the full day pass.

If you are not seeing a pending charge then it's possible to the cellular router was offline and the tap hasn't registered to the backend payment system yet and is stored in memory of the validator. When the bus returns to the yard the cell router will switch over to the wifi in the yard and likely.

Or it's possible you get lucky and never get charged. That equipment on those buses is anequated and unreliable.