Press: Bus Q Card loaders don't take new five dollar bills
In this week's Houston Press, Rich Connelly reports that some of METRO's Q-Card loaders aren't capable of reading the new $5 bill:
Metro's new prepaid Q Cards are supposed to be the latest thing in convenience. You can even add money to your card while you're riding on the bus!
Unless, that is, you're using one of the new five-dollar bills. The fancy Q Card machines don't take the purple-tinted currency.
Didn't anyone at Metro realize the government was changing the five? It was in all the papers.
"We're aware of this issue," says Metro spokeswoman Raequel Roberts. "We have software that we're about to install to process the new bills and we should have it in place by May 1, which we understand is the day the new bills will truly hit the market."
(News flash: The bills have already "truly hit the market.")
Roberts says the bus "reloaders" are custom-made; the reloaders on the light-rail platform are not custom-made, and they take the new five-dollar bills just fine.
Buses (not the 7+ mile-long train line) cover the bulk of METRO's service area, so the fact that the loaders work on the train platforms really doesn't help most transit users.
That's our favorite regional transit organization in action!
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/16/08 11:29 PM | Print |
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