Monthly MBTA Passes

[Photo: sivanagareddy/Flickr]

Monthly LinkPasses for January 2010 will soon be available for purchase

Our daily struggles with transit begin and end at the fare gate. Every day we tap, swipe, or insert our Cards and Tickets to enter the system. How we actually load that fare onto our Cards and Tickets is a completely different beast. The fifteenth day of December is fast approaching, which means that we'll be hearing that familiar Stephen Hawking-esque synthesized voice spouting disembodied messages about buying our monthly passes for January more frequently. That is, unless you ride with headphones, in which case you'll see these messages scroll on the in-station digital message boards however often you look at them.

In either case, monthly Bus and Link passes for the following month go on sale on the 15th of each month. You can buy them at a TVM (ticket vending machine) at your station of choice, one of many sales locations, at the new Downtown Crossing Customer Service Centre, or online at the MyCharlie Account Centre. I've blogged about the CharlieCard Web Programme before and my recommendation still stands: save yourself the hassle of having to remember or forgetting until the 1st of the month when the whole system falls to its knees and set up automatic monthly pass purchasing. You'll need to create an account, find your CharlieCard, and register it first.

So, be sure to set up a reminder for yourself if you don't already take advantage of automatic monthly pass purchasing and register your CharlieCard in the mean time. (Note the additional 'No Worries Protection' benefit for registering your CharlieCard.) Three days and counting.