If you like, you can skip to the end of this post to answer the poll about riding transit in other cities.

Results from last poll: collecting tickets

Last week I asked whether you collected your tickets and passes.

And out of 122 votes, the majority said they collect passes solely for the income tax deduction (56%). 39% say they just collect passes in general, and just 15% didn’t collect their tickets at all.

Well, I guess a tax cut is a great incentive to hold on to your pass! Although here’s why David Arthur saves his tickets:

I find they make nice bookmarks – at the moment, I’m using several Vancouver passes, a Toronto transfer, and a pair of Swedish railway tickets for this purpose.

And Dora said ticket collection sometimes just sort of happens.

These days I collect my passes for the tax deduction, but for a while when I was in high school/university I’d just randomly keep my transfers or passes. Sometimes I’d use a transfer as a bookmark for a while, but usually I’d just take my transfer (the old newsprint tear-off ones), folded into a little packet so I could stick it in the corner of my pocket, and put it in a box…by the time I moved out from my parents’ house and finally got rid of them, I had the equivalent of a shoebox full of folded-up transfers from high school and summers, and two years of monthly passes from university before the UPass program started at UBC.

But Nimo from Argentina gave us a reminder that smartcard technology will definitely replace our current tickets and passes — perhaps a reason to hang on to a few, if you’re nostalgic. Nimo wrote that his system only has plastic RFID tickets now: here’s a picture of the ticket and machine on a bus.

Have a look at all the comments at the original post.

This week’s poll: have you been on transit in other cities?

Since I was just in Chicago riding trains all over the region, I thought I’d put the question to you guys: how many cities have you tried transit in?

Feel free to share which cities you have been to in the comments!