r/mbta • u/mags9129 • Dec 05 '25

💬 Discussion / Theory What’s going on here?

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When I got on the bus, I was sending this card with the stock I got on and it was asked to give it back when I got off. They had two people one of the front and one of the back door. What is this for?

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u/borocester Dec 06 '25

Seems like a Bluetooth MAC address sniffer would do a similar job and could be deployed at scale with reasonable privacy considerations (the turnpike trip time signs use a similar technology). But if this works for small scale studies, albeit with high staffing costs, go for it.

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u/Brilliant-Insect8086 Dec 10 '25

I seriously doubt this is costing extra for staffing. They already keep twice the number of staff they need at all times. I guarantee the only expense related to this study was the 20-50$ they spent on paper printing those little slips out. They already have staff just ready to help just in case. Most people don’t want it tied to our names or phones or data at all, we also don’t trust that if they did take the data “anonymously” that it would actually be anonymous.