11–14 of 14 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fwiw, most major cities that I have lived in now have tap to pay.
With a phone or credit card, not one of their special cards?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With a phone or credit card, not one of their special cards?
Yeah, London, Birmingham, NYC, PDX all have tap to pay these days and they support NFC credit/debit cards and Apple Pay/other mobile wallets
So, enthusiastic agreement over here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fwiw, most major cities that I have lived in now have tap to pay.
With a phone or credit card, not one of their special cards?
Still, the card works on all public transport within the city, buses all over the country, and some commuter trains but not intercity trains (eg: I can go from Dublin to Belfast by tapping the card, but to be honest I'm probably gonna book that in advance anyway to guarantee a seat). Some smaller privately run bus operators also accept the card.
I think that free public transport makes a lot of sense. Ticketing infrastructure costs a shockingly large amount of money (billions for large systems [1],[2]). Reducing those costs whilst improving uptake makes a lot of sense. Of course, you then lose the revenue from people paying for tickets, but that can be paid for with taxes (which generally have a more progressive structure than ticket prices anyway). Free/sim…
There's also the huge convenience factor. Half the hassle of public transportation is figuring out how to pay for it... you can't ever just do the tap to pay thing, you either have to get cash and make change (not easy these days) or buy electronic fair from some terrible kiosk (half of which are broken at any given point), figure out exactly how much it would cost given X transfers of Y degrees, then scan the ticket…