In the last few weeks, I've had to go a few places where it has been beneficial to take mass transit. I normally don't take mass transit - not because I don't believe in it, but because working from home, I don't really need to use it. And where I go, I usually don't get a chance to use it. So mass transit is not an everyday occurrence for me.

My recent trips on the MTA Light Rail and CTA "El" Trains made me realize this - they're both dollar coin friendly.



When I bought my ticket for the MTA Light rail, they only accepted cash, and I only had a $10 bill. Somewhat to my surprise, I got a pocket full of 1 dollar coins back - and variety of them to boot (examples above). Going to Chicago the next week, I still had them in my pocket, and found that they were much easier to use to buy my CTA ticket than dollar bills. If you remember the movie Chicken Little, there's a scene where Chicken Little's friend Runt of the Litter is trying to buy a soda from the machine, and having his dollar bill rejected over and over and over again. That's me using dollar bill machines.

Wonder why the rest of the US doesn't use dollar coins?