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The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

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Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#241

Post by jhugo »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #227

QR codes seem like a better ticket medium. This is like a 100 bytes, a qr code can be over 2kb This is a cheap plastic substrate with ink printing over the top. A qr code is just ink - or some other even cheaper printing process if you prefer. This needs a specific ticket technology supplier over the next 10’s of years. QR codes can be drawn on screens or printed on paper and you can change suppliers for every compon…

When I lived in Shanghai 6 years ago they were trialling QR for the metro. It was really bad, always huge queues with people struggling to get the right angle/illumination/whatever to make it scan. I’ve never seen similar issues with contactless methods and in fact I think SH subsequently moved to them. The amount of data stored seems pretty trivial to scale if necessary.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#242

Post by lxgr »

inkyoto wrote: post #234
lxgr wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's what I meant, sorry if that wasn't clear – open-loop payment card based systems make more sense for infrequent users and tourists for all the reasons you've mentioned; dedicated card purse-based systems can be better for regular commuters.

> […] dedicated card purse-based systems can be better for regular commuters. I suppose it is a matter of personal or circumstantial preferences so I won't go into that, but through reading this discussion, I have learned that, e.g. the Boston MTBA's CharlieCard, have an expiry date and has to be replaced in person . From the regular commuter's point of view it is a nuisance of epic proportions – to turn up at a bus…

Mobile wallets are not a contradiction to dedicated transit cards, though!

Apple Wallet supports transit cards for dozens of transit systems, and most of them have some associated app to allow managing monthly passes or topping up the balance. Arguably, that's the best of both worlds.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#243

Post by iamjackg »

kumarvvr wrote: post #236

I am apalled at the crazy amount of waste this creates. Millions of tickets with chips inside them? My understanding is that they are one time use? In New Delhi metro, India, they used to use plastic tokens with these chips, but at the end of the journey, to exit the station you have to give the chip back. Nowadays, they use a printed QR system, and they have even gone paperless. I can buy the ticket with my mobile a…

You should read footnote #2. You can get an Opus card, which is reloadable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_card

I couldn't find any data on usage for one vs. the other, hopefully it's not a crazy amount. I'd imagine that most people who use transit on a regular basis do not use single-use tickets.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#244

Post by lxgr »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #237
lxgr wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a mix of plastic and metal: Full metal cards don’t actually support contactless interfaces! Two common ways of getting around that is to either sandwich a plastic part containing the antenna to a metal one, or to punch out a circular part in the middle of the metal card and put the antenna in there (and close it all up using more plastic). One card that doesn’t do either is the Apple Card – and as a result,…

> Probably a mix of plastic and metal: Full metal cards don’t actually support contactless interfaces! Well it's really annoying: the "metal" card (maybe as you say a mix of metal and plastic) is harder to swipe, so I got use to present it face down instead of face up, for I noticed that that way I get a better percentage of success on the first try. I don't have the problem with my full plastic credit/debit cards.

Yeah, the sandwich-type cards usually have one preferred side for contactless taps. That's one advantage of the cutout-style cards, I suppose, but I haven't seen many of these lately.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#246

Post by Forricide »

grishka wrote: post #230
CraigJPerry wrote: post #227

QR codes seem like a better ticket medium. This is like a 100 bytes, a qr code can be over 2kb This is a cheap plastic substrate with ink printing over the top. A qr code is just ink - or some other even cheaper printing process if you prefer. This needs a specific ticket technology supplier over the next 10’s of years. QR codes can be drawn on screens or printed on paper and you can change suppliers for every compon…

The problem with QR codes is that they are read-only. I don't know about Montreal, but Moscow public transport uses similar paper tickets, also Mifare Ultralight, except you can get them for different number of trips. When you use your ticket, the turnstile or validator would increment those one-way counters so that the next one would know how many trips you have left. You can't do that with a QR code without either…

You're correct, there are a bunch of different ticket options. Not sure about how it's actually implemented, though.

Slightly tangential, but when I was in Montreal, I was blown away that you just purchase a ticket from a machine and you get a printed out ticket with an NFC chip inside. Not my favourite part of the trip (Montreal is beautiful!) but definitely a cool piece of technology to see being put to such a mundane use.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#247

Post by lxgr »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #227

QR codes seem like a better ticket medium. This is like a 100 bytes, a qr code can be over 2kb This is a cheap plastic substrate with ink printing over the top. A qr code is just ink - or some other even cheaper printing process if you prefer. This needs a specific ticket technology supplier over the next 10’s of years. QR codes can be drawn on screens or printed on paper and you can change suppliers for every compon…

The two big things that QR codes have going for them is that they're cheaper to make and that they can be trivially displayed on a smartphone screen.

Contactless ICs are more powerful in every other aspect: They're rewritable (allowing reusable tickets), they can support challenge-response authentication (allowing secure offline usage, which in turn makes for faster transactions at the gate), and they're much less finicky to scan in my experience.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#248

Post by lxgr »

Reason077 wrote: post #216
lxgr wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not possible to top up a digital Oyster card on an iPhone or Apple Watch via an app or Apple Wallet? The Japanese transit cards that are supported by Apple Pay have that option, and it's arguably the best of both worlds.

> ”Is it not possible to top up a digital Oyster card on an iPhone or Apple Watch via an app or Apple Wallet?” It is, there’s even an auto top-up option that adds credit automatically if your balance drops below a certain level. But there’s no “digital” Oyster card, only physical ones. If you want to use a device to pay you have to use contactless. And either way, it’s still kind of a pain to have to maintain a balan…

Sorry, I always get Oyster and Octopus mixed up, and it happened again here :)

Octopus (used in Hong Kong) is the one that supports virtual cards in Apple Wallet.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#249

Post by lxgr »

jcynix wrote: post #71
jeffbee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the same system used by Boston MBTA? I was surprised to see single-use tap cards when I visited there for the first time yesterday. I wondered why the ticket isn't reloadable.

Single tap cards are usually just used with their "hardwired" chip serial number. That is stored in a central system which invalidates the number once you used it. This makes it rather easy (even if its environmentally unfriendly) to issue these cards: load a number of cards into your machine, register the serial number and invalidate it when used.

That's no longer the case: Many of the newer single-use ticket ICs (including the MIFARE Ultralight one mentioned in the article) actually support data storage and (very) basic cloning protection.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#250

Post by dwild »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #227

QR codes seem like a better ticket medium. This is like a 100 bytes, a qr code can be over 2kb This is a cheap plastic substrate with ink printing over the top. A qr code is just ink - or some other even cheaper printing process if you prefer. This needs a specific ticket technology supplier over the next 10’s of years. QR codes can be drawn on screens or printed on paper and you can change suppliers for every compon…

One advantage of the RFID, is that you can modify the ticket while using it. This is actually what made Montreal choose that solution. There's no internet connection to validate the tickets, they just update the ticket to say they are used.

I would have said that make it much more resilient, but I have seen so many buses that couldn't accept fares... I'm not so sure if it's the case.

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