Charlie Card dispensers fail during rush

2-hour breakdown hits purchasers at a.m. commute

The T spent $192 million two years ago to introduce the Charlie Card system, which replaced cash and tokens. (CHRISTINA CATURANO FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE/FILE 2006)

MBTA riders trying to buy monthly passes and fares ran into a snag yesterday when many T fare-dispensing machines broke down for nearly two hours during the morning rush, officials said.

The breakdown affected Charlie Card fare-dispensing machines that take credit and debit cards. Between 7:40 and 9:24 a.m., the machines "started experiencing intermittent disruptions of service" that typically lasted between five and seven minutes, but worked fine after that, T spokesman Joe Pesaturo said.

It's likely that the glitch, because it occurred on the first day of the month, affected thousands of people seeking to buy $59 monthly transit passes and monthly commuter rail and boat passes to use in February.

In November, the most recent month for which data are available, 71,547 people bought some kind of monthly T pass, Pesaturo said, although records don't show how many bought them on the first day of November and how many in late October or later in November.

Charlie Card machines that take cash were not affected by the breakdown.

MBTA officials called in officials from the German company that provides the Charlie Card technology, Scheidt & Bachmann GmbH, for a meeting yesterday demanding answers on what broke down and why and how to prevent it from happening again.

"They're going to come back to us with a corrective action plan," Pesaturo said, which could include beefing up computer processing power to handle a crush of monthly pass and fare sales like yesterday's.

Scheidt & Bachmann executives at their Burlington district office said that under the terms of their contract with the T, they were forbidden to speak to the news media.

The T spent $192 million two years ago to introduce the Charlie Card system, which replaced cash and tokens with electronic "stored value" cards and tickets that passengers use to pay subway, streetcar, and bus fares and to buy monthly passes for commuter trains and boats.

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.