In my six months writing on I Quant NY, three government agencies have responded to my posts.

The first was the NYC Department of Health (DOH), which respond to a post about possible grade inflation in restaurant inspection scores. Unfortunately, that response said almost nothing and we never heard from them again.

The second was the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), who responded to my exploration of a poorly designed street leading to tens of thousand of dollars in fire hydrant tickets each year. Unlike the DOH, the DOT came through commenting that they would "review the roadway markings and make any appropriate alterations.“ And to their credit, within a few months, they fixed what was a deficiency in street markings. That was incredible!

Today marks the third response, this time from the MTA. I was hoping they would be more of a DOT than a DOH. Andrew Ramos of WPIX reached out to them for a comment about my last post pointing out that the current vending machines are designed to add unusable balance to MetroCards. Their response:

“These machines do not hold an infinite amount of change and the denominations are suggested to insure there is ample change to accommodate customers who pay with cash,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “That being said, we will certainly look at this as part of the process involved in rolling out the next scheduled fare increase slated for next year”

Let’s break this response down for its absurdity.

I won’t even get into the “infinite” part. But there are many machines in the MTA system with no change at all. They are Credit Card Only machines and they are all over the system. So the MTA could make a small software change that only applies to the Credit Card Only machines with limited effort. Moreover, a slightly more complicated software change could lead to a more widespread solution. By asking customers upfront if they were paying by credit card, they could provide better default options tailored to the payment type, and avoid the need for “infinite change”.

So how does the MTA’s response really address this problem? By telling us they will look at it next year… with a scheduled fare increase.

My last post had about a quarter million hits in the last few days, and over 75,000 Facebook likes and shares. I’d say that shows an overwhelming interest in the area. But a small percentage of responses pointed out that the design may not be intentional. I wanted to believe that, since it would mean that the MTA might take responsibility for the design flaw, apologize, and promise to fix it quickly. But instead, we got a statement simply not addressing the points in the article. MTA, if you are out there, please prove me wrong. Fix the vending machines.