very ope

UPW erasure

No, they were also telling people UP-W was an alternative.

They were giving bad info as well tho. The people showing up to OTC heading to naperville were told to go to winfield when they shoulda been told to go to wheaton.

Eh, I can understand why they would say winfield

UP-W was also explicitly honoring BNSF tickets, which I wish I had known ahead of time!

I just had a zone 4 monthly pass and asked the conductor ahead of time.

Yes Mr Rational. A dummy, I never asked anyone and just bought a ticket 😮‍💨

They're the same ticket tho

I will suggest from a consumer perspective that buying “Line / Zone” tickets does not imply that they are transferable across lines.

Yeah they do need to make that clearer. Lots of people were surprised when I told them as long as they had the right zones on their ticket, they were good to go

Exactly. It's a consumer search friction resulting from the UI workflow of "pick a line" and then "pick a zone"; they could just sell zone tickets, but that's not at all how they frame the offering to the public.

OTOH, pick your line/stations and then here's your zone is more likely the most accessible order for most casual train riders. "What zone are you riding to" is completely opaque.

Totally. There’s an obvious alternative flow for someone who knows they need a BNSF zone 4 5 day pass versus the lowest common denominator user who is like, hey I’m getting on at Aurora and getting off, I don’t know, in Chicago somewhere? What ticket do I buy as the conductor is waiting

How do non-US systems do it? I think the obvious thing is to just have unified branding and rename everything by line or do TITO

Metra is metra is metra.

I have heard a conductor say exactly that phrase!

Yeah 30-40 years ago that wouldn't be the case but now that isn't the case thankfully.

Maybe the Terms of Service allow it but it’s not a reasonable implication of the product offered through Ventra.

What? Yes they are, if they weren't transferrable then it would say that for that specific line.

I think that's James's point; when I look at my pass in the Ventra app it does say BNSF in my active ticket list. When you click through to the ticket screen itself it doesn't, but that's why I asked to make sure it was good on UP-W as well.

(Full disclosure, James and I are IRL friends and law school classmates, he teaches about securities law.)

Peter, I hope eventually you will be liberated from the burden of making these kinds of conflicts disclosures 🤝

Yea it’s a hazard of keeping weird legacy branding