Starting today for the first time ever, you’ll be able to pay your T fare by just tapping your phone or credit card instead of tapping a CharlieCard.
The transformation has taken years — decades, really more than a century — to become a reality. To understand how we got to this point, let’s take a ride back to 1897.
It all began with money and innovation. Boston had just built the nation’s first subway trains, and to ride them, you just needed a little bit of cash.
“For the longest time, and I’m talking late 19th century, early 20th century, a nickel could get you most rides on most vehicles,” said Steven Beaucher, an historian of the T and owner of the T merchandise shop, Ward Maps and MBTA gifts, and all-around MBTA nerd. “I take pleasure in explaining to kids who I meet, who pick up a token in my shop and they say, what is this?”
For more than half a century, cash was how you got around, from the time when trains first ran through downtown and were operated privately to the age of the T’s predecessor, the MTA. It was cheap. But then everything changed.
“Tokens were introduced when the MBTA was established in 1964,” said Will Kingkade, a senior director at the T.
Tokens established a whole new era, he said: You gave cash to a person in a booth, and then they gave you a token. Riders then lined up behind turnstiles where they dropped a token and pushed their way through for a ride. It lasted for decades, and over time, fares kept going up from $0.20 in 1964 to around $2 in 2007 until everything changed again.
In 2007, then-Governor Romney appeared alongside The Kingston Trio, the band that popularized the old protest song “Charlie on the MTA,” to announce a new way of paying for rides named after the character at the center of the song, who was famously trapped on the T.
Those CharlieCards and Charlie Tickets have now been around for more than a decade. But beginning today, many of us will be saying goodbye to Charlie and hello to paying with your phone or your credit card.
“I probably sound like a total transit nerd, but I just, I think it’s really exciting,” Kingkade said.
Jarred Johnson, executive director of the transit advocacy organization Transit Matters, is also excited about this transformation.
He said it’ll make trains, buses and trolleys more convenient for people like out-of-towners, infrequent commuters and everyday people who just think, hey, maybe I should take the T to get to where I need to go.
“It’s a really exciting feature that, again, you know, for folks who don’t always take the T, it kind of lowers that barrier of entry,” Johnson said. “So these are folks who maybe don’t come in the office a ton.”
The shift does not change anything for people who take the commuter rail or ferries, use weekly or monthly passes, get a pass through school or work, or just prefer to use cash. The MBTA told GBH News that total contactless payment across the board is still a ways away.
So for now, this is not the end of the CharlieCard, just the beginning of a farewell.
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