T pushing a new form of currency: CharlieCard
It's called a CharlieCard, no space and a second capital C. Get used to it.
Starting Monday, the MBTA wants you to get one. Badly.
At daybreak Monday, at least 350 T personnel will fan out at subway stations and bus stops to start handing out the plastic fare cards, nearly a million of which will be distributed before the end of the year. Passengers can put money on the cards by inserting tokens, cash, or credit cards in new vending machines.
Not only will the new CharlieCard offer the cheapest rides under a fare hike starting Jan. 1, but the success of the T's new $89 million automated fare-collection system largely depends on the card's broad use.
Boardings on subway trains and especially on buses are supposed to speed up with the cards. Passengers have complained that bus boardings using paper CharlieTickets have slowed since the new technology was added early this year .
Unlike CharlieTickets, which are fed into fare gates, CharlieCards are tapped on a square black reader at the gates.
"A second or two just because you're tapping and not swiping will significantly speed up service," Daniel A. Grabauskas, general manager of the T, said during a press briefing yesterday.
When the fare hike takes effect, CharlieCards will offer the cheapest fares for the bus ($1.25) and subway ($1.70), versus using cash or a paper CharlieTicket ($1.50 and $2). CharlieCards will also offer free bus-to-subway transfers. CharlieTickets won't.
Commuter rail riders and boat, express bus, and one- and seven-day pass holders will have to wait until next year to use the new cards, though corporate MBTA pass programs will start getting them this month.
Officials admit that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority faces several challenges in converting riders to the card, including convincing passengers that their paper CharlieTickets are not the same as CharlieCards. But officials are confident the transition will be smooth, pointing to the more than 130,000 senior and disabled riders who have been using CharlieCards for months.
The number of retail outlets where passengers can buy and recharge the new fare cards will expand this month, including grocery and convenience stores. Forty-one sales terminals will be in place by Monday; more than 75 will be installed by the end of the month and another 125 next year, officials said. They hope to install enough outlets by the end of next year that riders will have to walk no more than a quarter-mile from a T stop to put money on their CharlieCard.
Still, T officials are scrambling to install CharlieCard vending machines in areas of the city that depend on transit, yet do not have many retail outlets.
Transit activists say they're worried that riders, particularly bus passengers, will be forced to use the more expensive CharlieTicket or pay cash because they lack access to CharlieCard machines.
Khalida Smalls, head of the T Riders Union, said she wants to make sure the new fare card is widely distributed.
"We just want to be sure that people can use it," she said.
Mac Daniel can be reached at mdaniel@globe.com. 
