innismir.net

In the words of the late, great, Irving Snyder, WA1ETG SK, I have a “tale of woe.” As always, as an employee of the fantastic Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the opinions of this website are my own and not the view of my employer or anyone else.

Late in August, I was in a rush on a Wednesday and couldn’t change my five dollar bill for ones to pay for parking. With the MBTA, they have something called an “honor box” in which you pay your $4 parking fee into a small slot numbered with your space. “No worries…” I said to myself, “…since I am in a rush, I will eat the late fee and just pay them when I get a violation notice.” A brilliant plan, correct? It was, I’ve done it before. Also, since I knew I was likely going to face the same problem on Friday I was just going to pay $10 with the Friday violation notice. This plan crashed to earth when I got the Friday violation notice:

Can you spot the key difference between these two notices? According to the 8/21 notice, I have 8 outstanding violations. This is impressive, as with every violation notice previous to this, including the 8/19 notice, hasn’t included a peep about any kind of outstanding violations. So, I place an e-mail to LAZ Parking, as they suggested on their voice mail greeting, to ask them how the heck this happened. They politely provided me a spreadsheet showing that I hadn’t paid my violations numerous times since they took over.

Slight problem: I did pay them.

I’m no angel. According to the spreadsheet I had 16 violations since December 1st. However, I have been extremely thorough in paying my violations since the parking fee increase, specifically because I knew that $5/pop could add up quick. While I cannot specifically say “Oh, hey, I paid that violation on June 23rd.” (Because really, who remembers that?) There were two violations that I was sure I had paid. Also, apparently, I did possibly owe them $2.75 from a violation in December. I won’t even attempt to remember that.

So, I ask them how I can contest it? Well, simple, I just tell them which spot I parked in during those dates and they can check.

Slight problem: There is not assigned parking at the MBTA.

With the MBTA commuter rail, each spot is numbered and that’s the number you pay for. However, it’s first come first serve. Most days I usually get a spot in the between 50 and 100. But really, I now have to keep track of which spot I park in on a daily basis just in case LAZ says I didn’t pay? What? I explained this to the CSR and after following up a week later asking them if there was any movement on this she reiterated she needed the numbers.

This brings us to today.

I give up.

That’s it MBTA, you win. You’ve created a system where you can tell people they owe money and they have little to no recourse. You have a cash system, someone can have no proof they paid on random dates and in order to contest it, you make them jump through nearly impossible hoops. I give up. I am bending over and taking it.

So, now, in order to cover my ass:

• I will be paying my outstanding fee with a check, probably hand delivered, and I will get a receipt.
• Further violations will be paid with via a check, as suggested by LAZ, and I will be keeping the canceled checks on record.
• After I get the canceled check, I will be following up with LAZ to make sure they credited it to my account.

Plus, just to add insult into injury halfway through the back and forth with LAZ, I get this on my windshield:

A $15 ticket because I was parking in the lot with an “outstanding balance”

Thanks, MBTA.

I take the magnificent MBTA Commuter Rail twice a day to get to and from my job in Boston. I pay $250/month for this privilege, plus, the MBTA makes me pay $2 a day to park in order to take the train. Recently the MBTA decided, partially because it can’t balance a checkbook, to up the parking rate to $4 a day, a 100% increase. You know, because people are swimming in money right now. Anyway, since I have no choice, myself and other riders have ince resigned myself to this fate, and just have thought of doing evil things to the giant banners that appeared at the parking lots at the start of November.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I saw this sign posted above the collection box this morning:

$3! I was in shock! I had heard nothing about this! Had the T had come to its senses and made a more reasonable increase? I was pleased, but my hopes were quickly dashed when I looked 3 feet to the right and saw this sign:

Uhhhh… What? How much will it be MBTA? You have conflicting signs not even 3 feet apart at this station. Which one is correct? I did some research, and after looking at the MBTA Parking Increase FAQ I see no mention of a $3 rate at commuter rail spots.

What say you, MBTA?

UPDATE (11/13): As of this morning, the “$3.00/day” sign is gone, proving that the MBTA was just playing a cruel joke on half-awake morning commuters. (I keed! I keed)

DarkSun over at UniversalHub posted a nice complete Green Line map featuring all the stops that are above ground. Adam, UH’s webmaster, colored it all up nice and green in one of the comments for all the confused tourists. Being a MBTA geek, and having a lunch break in which I was bored stiff, I decided to raise the ante a bit and make it follow semi-official MBTA coloring:

Click for bigger
Booyah! In your face Adam!

NOTE: This weblog, and especially this post is of my own opinion and had nothing to do with my employer.

If you’ve been paying attention to the usual DEFCON brouhaha this weekend, you’ll note that my fine public transportation system decided to file an injunction against 3 MIT students who tested the MBTA’s security and successfully reversed engineering the Charlie Card. Too bad the presentation deck had already been released. Whoopsie!

As a surly information security engineer and a regular MBTA rider, I feel that I can more-or-less discuss with some authority the issues discussed in the presentation deck.

First, the physical security issues they discuss are spot on. As any regular rider of the MBTA knows, there are near constant issues with “exit only” doors unlocked or left wide open and people zipping through open gates when someone is exiting. The MBTA “customer service agents” either ignore it or flat out don’t care. On the Green Line (Which are trolleys, for you non-Bostonian folk.) people regularly get on via a rear door completely bypassing the fare collection system up front. Hell, even the MBTA Police seem to not want to deal with it. As someone who drops $250/month on the MBTA, I am the one who ends up getting screwed.

Social engineering the employees is always one of the biggest issues and the hardest to protect from. As shown in the deck, one can hit up eBay and make oneself into a true blue MBTA employee. I’ve seen first hand (badly) forged MBCR (MBTA’s commuter rail contractor) credentials being used by people to scam free rides. The MBTA spends big bucks on their Anti-Terrorism education campaigns, perhaps that would be better spent in educating their employees to do the same and teach them to start securing their infrastructure. They should also start classifying their information and at least try to keep “non-public” information somewhat private.

The Charlie Card issues are trivial. I long suspected that the stored value cards were similar to the New York Metro Card and would be vulnerable to a cloning attack or could be easily reversed engineered. These guys sat down and did it. From what I can glean regarding the RFID attack, the encryption key is trivial to crack and can be brute forced rather quickly. Had the MBTA opted to go with a more secure RFID system, this would be a lot harder to break, and from the sounds of it, more secure fare collection systems exist.

I’m somewhat pleased at the local media coverage on this. They seem to be painting a fair picture of the situation. So, Kudos to them.

In my not so humble opinion, the MBTA is 100% in the wrong on this. The judge should not have issued the gag order and the presentation should have gone forward. By doing so, the MBTA squashed discussion on its security, and has made itself even less secure in the process.

UPDATE: Apparently k4sac from twitter submitted this to digg. If you liked the post, considering feeding my ego and giving it a bump.

I take the MBTA commuter rail into Boston every morning. I pick up the train from Middleboro and ride the whole line into Boston. Normally, it’s a time to take a nap. Today was a little more interesting.

I got on the train at 7:10, and sat down at my seat. I am highly trained, so I was out cold by the time we pulled out of the station at 7:20. I awoke from my slumber as we pulled into the JFK/UMass stop. (Note, I have no idea HOW I do this, but I seem to have an uncanny ability to wake up before we pull into South Station. Again, I’m highly trained.) We pulled into the railyard, and came to a stop as we waited for our usual “Terminal Congestion” to clear up. All seemed normal.

All of a sudden, the conductor comes rushing through.

“Excuse me! Coming through! Need to get through!”

Odd… thought I; I wonder where he is going… I continued to wait for us to pull in the station…

Then, the engineer comes rushing through, much in the same manor.

“Excuse me! Coming through! I need to get back to the engine!”

For those of you who don’t take the train. The engineer coming through the car is roughly the equivalent to the pilot running through the plane with a worried look on his or her face, just not as bad. At this point, the passengers realize something is wrong, and the murmurs start. I realize we’re going to be stuck here for a bit.

About 5 minutes later the PA system comes on

“Excuse me, folks… The engine is filling with smoke, so we’re going to get everyone out of the last car so they don’t have to deal with it”

OK… Smoke + Train engine = Not good

People started filling up into my car and some looked genuinely nervous. I figured there was nothing to really worry about, but, I was happy to see that I was located at the emergency exit window. We continued to sit there, and wonder what was going to happened when the PA came back on.

“Mmmmmrrrffrrr murffrummmrrr mrrr fuuu mrrrr”

I still have no idea what they said. They were probably making some kind of real announcement, but they were so quiet, no one could hear it. I only heard that because I was right underneath a speaker. I had to actually shoosh people to try and make out what was being said.

Soon after, word came through the crowd that we were getting off. We assumed we would be walking down the tracks, because, after all, we were literally a stones throw away from South Station. Nope. Another train pulled up on the track to our left.

At this point, I sent a message to my wife, who works in one of the towns I pass through on the train. I figured there was a non-zero chance that she might here some kind of rumor.

If you here something about a train filling with smoke and people being evaced, that would be me. I’m fine. Love you.

People started getting off and filling the other train. When I walked out, I did glance behind me at the engine, and failed to see any kind of smoke. After getting on the other train, everyone thought that they could just stand up and everyone would still fit, leaving angry conductors yelling at people to move in, but people having no where to move. I was smart and sat down, allowing me to avoid being squished and not have to stand for another 15 minutes while people shuffled on.

We pulled into South Station around 9:15, about 60 minutes from when we broke down, and 2 hours from when we left Middleboro. Hooray MBTA. The one bit of good news from this is that I made $15.50 because I was over 30 minutes late, which I will be submitting today. IC-2200H, here I come.