A small announcement appeared on the FAX website last week: fareboxes are being added to buses on Route 1 (Q) and all-door boarding is being eliminated.

Fareboxes will soon be installed on Route 1 – BRT buses. Once installed, passengers must board through the front door and use the farebox to: Pay in cash, Validate ride cards, or Activate passes FAX

On Twitter, I confirmed with the agency that all-door boarding will end, even for those who choose to pay at the machines.

Yes we are. Fareboxes are being added to all BRT buses currently. The system still has Traffic Signal Priority. Stations with bulb out which keep us in the lane & much more — @FresnoFAX (@FresnoFAX) January 10, 2020

Pre-payment and all-door boarding was one of the only “BRT” features that hadn’t yet been eliminated. As a reminder:

Exclusive bus lanes, ELIMINATED

Articulated (60-foot) buses, ELIMINATED

“Level boarding,” ELIMINATED

10-minute headways, SCALED BACK

Off-board payment, ELIMINATED

And with that, BRT in Fresno is now fully dead.

Off-board payment and all-door boarding is important because it speeds up buses. San Francisco moved to all-door boarding in 2014, and it was a massive success. Los Angeles has all-door boarding on some lines. New York City and Boston plan on implementing all-door boarding throughout their entire networks within 2 years.

When people have to pay at the front, everybody in the bus has to sit and wait while a single person struggles to get the machine to eat their dollar. It also moves the bus operator from being a driver, to someone who also has to enforce payment. This in turn creates situations where the driver decides to handle fare evasion by threatening to not drive.

Fresno plans on adopting a tap-card payment method this year, but instead of expanding all-door boarding to all lines, they’re eliminating it.

And so as the nation moves forward, Fresno once again steps backwards.