Friday fun trivia: name this ticket’s year, part II!
Friday fun trivia: name this ticket’s year, part II!
If you like, skip to the end of this post to see another classic transit ticket and tell us what year it’s from!
Results from last week: what years were these tickets from?
Last week I asked you to tell me what years these tickets pictured were from.
Eric chimed in immediately with the exact dates, which everybody else to generally agreed with:
The yellow (one zone) and red (two zone) transfers are from 1994, and the green (three zone) transfer is from 1996. The addresses and phone numbers are a hint as well – at some point between 1994 and 1996, BC Transit’s head office moved from Vancouver to Surrey.
(Btw, I loved that Holly and John remembered these as the first tickets they ever used—memories!)
And of course, you guys are correct — according to Doug, CMBC’s farebox revenue manager, those are definitely from the 1990s, and we used those paper tickets until 2001 when the electronic tickets showed up.
Doug also mentioned that the green ticket is actually a West Vancouver Blue Bus transfer, since the phone numbers on the back are slightly different.
As you can tell, we had to order a LOT of these tickets in the past, since these transfers are all customized for a single date, and operators needed a stack of a 1, 2, and 3 zone transfers on hand. Doug in fact said we used to get 250 million per year!
Now with the electronic tickets, however, we use just 20 million per year. The new tickets are more expensive individually, but cheaper overall because we use way less of them.
This week: more trivia! What year is this ticket from?
OK, another ticket item, since I have one around! Can you tell me in the comments what year it’s from? (Something like “late 60s” or “early 70s” is fine, although again, exact year is cool too.)
Click it for a MUCh larger version, and here is the back view of the ticket too. And Derek Cheung may have tipped you off last week about this one, but hey, whatever :) Again, next week I’ll have the answer and any background stories I can gather from people in the company!
I remember the tickets from last week’s question, but I have no recollection of the one with the Night tab. And since I don’t recall this ticket, it must mean it came before last week’s ones, when I was still a little one and had absolutely no idea what was going on. So I’ll take a stab at it and guess that this ticket was from between 1990 and 1993/1994.
How did the paper tickets work? I so clearly remember what they look like, but not how they worked.
I’d say this is from 1990, given the Centennial Celebration logo watermark in the background. Ah, high school memories… :) I think I actually have one of these in my limited transfer collection.
I also recall the Buzzer that year featured a series of historical transit photographs and articles over 6 or 8 issues — I was so fascinated with them, I cut them all out and put them in a scrapbook! That series helped turn me into the seasoned transit nut I am today. :p
To answer Ashley’s question about how the paper tickets worked:
Each bus had a clipboard with 3 clips on it attached to the dash near the farebox. The driver would set the transfers in the clips so that when he tore one off for you, the last time showing above the tear would be the time it expired (usually 90 minutes after the current time, but some nice drivers on long suburban routes or in heavy traffic would give you one with 2 or 3 hours on it). When you got on your next bus, all you did was show it to the driver, no validator necessary.
The ND on the bottom stood for Next Day, so if you got on the bus late at night (at that time there was 24-hour service on many routes), you could use it up until 6:00am or on the first trip leaving the next morning.
The purpose of the Night tab was so that they wouldn’t have to print such long transfers (compare to last week’s examples). The driver just tore off the Night tab if it was between 6:00am and 5:45pm, giving you a “day” transfer, and left it on if the time was 6:00pm or later. Sometimes the tab would fall off in your pocket though, making your transfer expire 12 hours too soon, lol… I guess that’s why they didn’t keep that design very long!
The original version of the “Night” tab didn’t have the date printed on it; it was a solid blue rectangle with the word “Night”.
It was changed to the version shown because you could save your “Night” tabs from previous transfers and tape it on to “future” transfers to be used at night!
And before the advent of the multi-direction transfer the route number, starting terminus (east end of line or west end of line) and zone of issue had to punched. Made for a LOT of transfers that needed to be punched when routes were interlined!
I know the answer, but anybody know what “Spec”, “Grge”, and “Last Section” were used for?
Derek Cheung: I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess. Spec stood for special services ie: New Year’s Eve Trippers, PNE shuttles, Charters and other “special work”. Grge, I’m guessing stood for trips going to the Garage. Last section maybe for routes that were just for a section of a route, like short turning the 9 on Granville, or the 41 at Dunbar. As for what year the ticket’s from I’m going to say 1990, but weren’t the tickets with night on them used on late night services?
These tickets are STILL used.
Not the same ones but on BC Transit sytems OUTSIDE of the GVA like in Abbotsford, Bowen Island, Gibsons, Nanaimo.
They still use torn paper transfers as they do not have the fareboxes.
Victoria has electronic fareboxes but not tickets like ours.
Mark – Bowen Island transit is a Translink service, not a BC Transit system.
I also remember the lost night tab being a huge issue, and I remember the days when it was just a solid blue box. Not to mention the repetitive noise of that hole punch and the pile of confetti under the driver.
Please tell me the next selection in the collection will be one of the retro ones where the colour of the transfer was meaningless, and just changed every month. Anyone else remember purple, orange, and aquamarine transfers?
I’d say Reva probably has it right with the watermark – 1990 being the centenary of transit in BC.
Open question: Which areas were designated zones 2A/2B/2C and 3A/3B?
And I just have to share this particular set of transfers: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickie22/3786283898/
Hmm…I’ll take a shot at this too! I’m gonna say sometime between ’94 and ’96…but honestly, throughout all my years of riding the bus (even when I was a kid when those kinds of tickets were still around) I have NEVER seen a ticket like this before…
@ Dennis: Yes! Purple, pink, turquoise, etc… I was just a kid, but I remember being very disappointed when they changed to the yellow-red-green transfer system… all my mom would bring home was yellow ones, lol.
I have an even older transfer in my collection, from the 70s or early 80s, which is plain white with no colour at all. How boring! ;)
i think the transfer is from the late 80s like 87 to 89. In penticton we use red transfer instead of white and use the code not dates.
Eric: If I remember correctly, 2A was North Shore, 2B was Burnaby/New West, and 2C was Richmond. 3A was Coquitlam, and 3B was Delta/Surrey/Langley. The little island of zone 3 that was Lion’s Bay is probably not indicated because West Van would have had different transfers.
And yeah, the logo gives this away, must be 1990.
Dennis, you are correct. I remember the days where travelling from Zone 2B to 2C for example would be a two zone fare when paying cash. The old Skytrain ticket machines showed Burnaby as a yellow (1 zone), most everywhere else as red (2 zone) and Lions Bay as 3 zone. Now you can get from Burnaby to Richmond on a 1 zone fare even with cash fare.
Side note, the distance based fares with the smartcards will remove any remaining discrepencies like what’s mentioned aboved as well as the $3.75 fare from Joyce to Patterson Station. I wonder how they will do a monthly distance based pass?
i know the year of the transfer it is 1990 and the 100 years of transit in bc/vancouver i had one long time ago.
I’ll go with the other responses here and say it’s definitely 1990, you can faintly make out those numbers on the watermarking on this ticket.
@Donald: That is true because there was no regular service between Burnaby/New West and central Richmond, like the 410 does now. And don’t current station maps and TVMs still display the fare-zone map, with the station’s location within the yellow zone?
Looking at the back of the transfer, I now want to ask when BC Transit changed the transfer policy to make it multi-directional?
Eric: a six-month pilot project for the multi-directional tickets was brought in starting around November 1990, and then it seems to have been made permanent shortly thereafter. (Info I got from the November 1990 Buzzer!)