Tag: Ticket

Happy 2009 everyone! It is the new year and that means my little experiment is done. I have December’s train ticket results and they are identical to November’s. My ticket was checked a total of 9 times which at $2.25 USD a ticket comes to $20.25 USD total. This means I could have saved $39.75 USD if I did not buy the $60.00 USD monthly pass.

Totals

I did this little experiment for 5 months. That means I bought 5 monthly passes at $60.00 USD. That adds up to $300.00 USD that I paid for travel on the NJ Transit rail system. If I only bought tickets for the times that I was checked I would have only needed 46 tickets and my total would have been $103.50 USD. That is a difference of $197.50 USD. I could have saved almost two hundred dollars by not buying monthly passes. That is a pretty staggering number if you ask me.

Conclusion

My only explanation for these results is that NJ transit just doesn’t care about checking tickets between Secaucus Junction and Hoboken. It’s a ten minute ride and I guess they just think they have better things to do than to worry about who boarded the train for the short journey. That annoys me slightly since I am following the rules for no real reason. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my little experiement as much as I enjoyed performing it.

December is here and so is November’s results. Of the 36 possible times my train ticket could be checked, it was only checked 9 times. One way tickets are still $2.25 USD so if I only bought one way tickets, it would have cost me $20.25 USD. This means I could have saved $39.75 USD by not buying a monthly pass.

I have decided to run the experiement through the end of the year. I figure 5 months is more than enough data to reasonably conclude whether or not I should buy train tickets. Stay tuned!

I have October’s results for my train ticket experiement and the . Of the 45 times I rode the train this past month, my ticket was only checked three times! At $2.25 USD a one way ticket, my three tickets would have costed me $6.75 USD. That means I could have saved $53.25 USD if I did not buy a monthly pass.

I am beginning to wonder if I am somehow a factor in all of this. I don’t take my ticket out unless I am asked to display it. I am thinking that because I am not waving my pass around at the first sight of a conductor, that the train staff thinks my ticket has been checked already. That is not acceptable to me since it is not my responsibility to make sure my ticket is checked. That is the train staff’s responsibility and I am not going to do their job. I will see if next month continues the streak of no checks.

October has begun and I have the September’s results for my train travels. Make sure to read part 1 of this story to learn why I am keeping track of the number of times my train ticket is checked.

For the month of September I traveled on the train a total of 42 times and had my ticket checked only 15 times. Remember that a one way ticket is $2.25 USD and a monthly pass is $60.00 USD. If I only bought one way passes for the times I was checked I would have saved $26.25 USD.

So it seems that buying a monthly pass is turning out to be a bad idea.

I am a regular working stiff now and that means that I am also a commuter. To get to work I have to take two trains: New Jersey Transit and PATH. Every month I have to buy a monthly pass to ride NJ Transit but as I settled into my commute I quickly noticed a disturbing trend; my ticket was not being checked.

Since I payed $60 USD for my monthly pass I was kind of annoyed that my ticket wasn’t being checked. Every time I rode the train without a check, I was wasting money. Because of this, I decided to do a little experiment. I started keeping track of when my ticket was checked to see how much money I could be saving by not buying a monthly pass. My backup plan would be a standard one way ticket. Since a one way ticket does not expire, I would keep one in my wallet for a time when my ticket was checked.

The first month I conducted this test was August. In this month I rode the train a total of 40 times. Of those 40 times, my ticket was checked only 10 times. A one way ticket for my trip costs $2.25 USD. So for the month of august, if I just bought one way tickets, my travel costs would be $22.50 USD. That is $37.50 cheaper than a monthy pass. That’s quite a savings.

Because of my findings in August, I decided to continue my experiment through September. I wanted to gather more data to see if it August was just a fluke or if NJ Transit really doesn’t care. I will post my September results in part 2 of this story. Stay tuned.