Read up on the free ride program, you will still be required to tap, possess a tap card, and it won’t be barrier free. Probably something to do with “keeping the homeless off” and statistics and data gathering. The system just won’t charge any money to your tap card when you tap. You can tap with a $0 balance and it’ll say “Go”.
There’s also talk about capping the free rides to two per day, and more than two it’ll start charging you $1.75.
So this will still be useful to ride “legally”....we know people still won’t tap even if it’s free because people are jerks or lazy.
We know the real reason they’ll still require you to tap, so that way the public won’t say they wasted money on the Tap card equipment.
tl;dr the tap card and related equipment will still be used even when rides would be free. The free rides are encoded on the card itself not just letting people on willy nilly
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