We've all seen the ads in the subway saying so cleverly "If someone tries to sell you a swipe, don't buy it. It's illegal any way you swipe it." This is targeted at the enterprising people who stand in front of turnstiles with unlimited cards, or hacked ones that give them free rides, and sell entry to the system to passersby. Supposedly they sometimes jam the Metrocard vending machines in the area to force people who needed to refill their cards to use their service. But what about the legality or permissibility of the 'Good Samaritan Swipe,' in which on one's way out, one swipes one's unlimited card for someone going in?

At the 4 train stop in the Bronx where I get off on my way to work, there is often someone milling about requesting a Good Samaritan Swipe. So far I've always declined for a mix of reasons including uncertainty about legality and just wanting to get out of there. But I always feel a little guilty afterward, as I think about how easy it would have been to just swipe on my way out, and how expensive a $2 ride probably is to that person. One day a man asked someone exiting right in front of me to swipe him in, and he said "Man, there's a cop right there!" The first man said emphatically "I know!", not explaining how that bore on the situation in his view. I decided at that point that it probably wasn't worth the risk, unless I found out definitively that it is allowed. Today, for the first time at this stop, I saw someone grant the swipe. There didn't seem to be a cop present, and the token booth clerk looked on in his usual daze.

I can understand the MTA objecting to the Samaritan Swipe for the same principle as they would to selling swipes--that you are depriving them of the income they would have gotten if the person paid for their own card. One can't expect the MTA to have sympathy for these people that might otherwise spend hours panhandling for the $2. But certainly in practice the Samaritan Swipe is not the threat to revenue or public safety that the swipe salesmen are. I can't help but think the wording of the ads acknowledges that sale of rides is the much bigger problem and will be dealt with much more strictly. And yet the official rules of conduct have this to say:

Section 1050.4 c

Except for employees of the Authority acting within the scope of their employment or other expressly authorized agents of the Authority, no person shall sell, provide, copy, reproduce or produce, or create any version of any fare media or otherwise authorize access to or use of the facilities, conveyances or services of the Authority without the written permission of a representative of the Authority duly authorized by the Authority to grant such right to others.

and after all, the MTA is not exactly known for its proportionate response to such civilization-rending offenses as taking up more than one seat on a mostly empty train. So I think for now I have to continue denying the Samaritan Swipe, much as I'd like to offer it.

You may have noticed that some things on the site look pretty crappy right now. I'm in the process of upgrading to Movable Type 3.33, from the ages-old 2.61, to try to cut down on the 10-20 minutes a day I've been spending trying unsuccessfully to keep up with the deluge of spam comments. The upgrade itself went surprisingly smoothly, but I failed to realize that MT would callously overwrite my CSS file without warning me. So I've gotten it back to the point where everything's at least legible, and everything should be pretty much back the way it was by tonight when I can retrieve a backup copy of the file. Until then I'll be playing with the new tools I have to combat the spammers.

Update: back to normal now, as long as you don't go exploring in the archives too much, as I know you're dying to do. But now that I'm 'back in the game' of caring about how this site looks, more changes may be afoot.

The MTA has some interesting new ideas for letting customers know about service changes. On several recent mornings over the last few months, I have gone to the downtown platform on the 4 train at Fordham Road on the Bronx and waited patiently with about 20 to 50 other people, watching trains go by in the other direction, until a train came going my way, but on the middle utility set of tracks. The conductor was leaning out the window as it went by, and I could see him shouting something at us, but since he didn't shout when he was right in front of me, I couldn't hear him at all above the train's noise. But by following the crowd I gathered that we were being told to go to the uptown platform, take it 3 or 4 stops, and get a downtown train there. No signs or anything, no warning from the token booth clerks, just an apparently spontaneous decision to do some track work or something.

Visible from my window at work in the south bronx, the new 145th Street Bridge on the Harlem river was delivered at the beginning of the month (gothamist) and is awaiting installation at about 129th street. There are several other bridges of its type along the river, which will have to spin out of the way to let this one through. Presumably some also had to spin for it to get its current spot, but none of us saw it happen.

While getting this photo (the view from my window was more confusing so I went down to a bit of wasteland and train tracks by the river) I learned a new word: putrescible. It literally means subject to putrefaction, and is usually used (as it was in this case) in reference to putrescible waste:

Solid waste that contains organic matter capable of being decomposed by microorganisms and of such a character and proportion as to cause obnoxious odors and to be capable of attracting or providing food for birds or animals.

The construction yard next to our building, just FYI, does not accept putrescible waste, though judging by the lovely aromas that frequently waft in through our windows, the nearby WM (Waste Management) facility does. The word has a nice ring for something so unpleasant.

When you visit the Apple store, for example by entering 'store.apple.com' in your browser, you are forwarded to this address:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa

I find it strange that Apple, of all companies, would see fit to arbitrarily encode a phone number into their URL. Is there that much demand to know the number, and/or are they so eager to have us call it? I can't imagine ordering from them using the phone as an experience could improve upon their website or their brick-and-mortar stores. Tech support is another story, but it doesn't go any further toward explaining the need to have it in the URL. Perhaps it's a jab at other companies like Amazon that are notoriously secretive with their customer service phone number. Are there any other directories under 'store.apple.com' than the phone number, if indeed it is a real directory in some sense? Not that I've discovered.