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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

#471

Post by abhayhegde »

lxgr wrote: post #190
ak217 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the write-up. How does this fit into the broader NFC ecosystem? What do other big metro systems like Omny, Clipper, Smartrip etc use? Apple and Google seem to implement some NFC protocols in their devices but in a much more programmable way, how does that work? Is the protocol used in credit cards related at all? And how do these relate to Felica, the system used everywhere in Japan (which was in the news…

Apple and Google achieve the same outcome (i.e. something called "card emulation", where an NFC chip can act as an emulated ISO 14443-4 smartcard), but they achieve it through very different ways: Google just has an Android API for it called HCE (Host Card Emulation), and anybody can write an app that implements it (i.e. Google Pay has no special position compared to competitors). In a nutshell, you just get a callba…

Is it possible that the Android implementation could be less secure given the lack of a dedicated secure element? Perhaps not, but I am curious why Apple does it that way.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#472

Post by Rehanzo »

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…

The chips are slightly smaller than a grain of salt. Doesn't seem like the craziest amount of waste.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#473

Post by JBiserkov »

ck45 wrote: post #467

The article itself is a very interesting summary of the technology used. As for the comments, there seems to be a big discussion on whether NFC or barcodes (includes QR codes) are the better technology for public transport ticket I have a completely different view: No matter what technology you are using, after having used public transport in multiple cities in Germany with the same flat rate tickets, I wonder if thi…

"Not only should municipal transit be zero fare, using it should provide tax credits."

"This is a genuine, serious proposal. Cars and car infrastructure are so enormously expensive and destructive. Paying people to use public transit instead would be a net positive, and it's not even close."

From: https://hachyderm.io/@jenniferplusplus/112667806776752372

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#474

Post by xnzakg »

amluto wrote: post #416
m463 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be more analogous to your wifi antennas looking like 6" cat 5 cables with an RJ-45 painted on the end :)

We’re almost there. Try zooming in to the first picture on this RJ45 connector: https://www.truecable.com/products/cat6a-field-term-plug-shi... At that price point, there should be a wifi module hidden in it somewhere :)

Two things spring to mind: a whole computer inside an SFP module[1] and the O.MG cable[2]

[1]: https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/smart-sfp-linux-inside [2]: https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#475

Post by bunderbunder »

ck45 wrote: post #467

The article itself is a very interesting summary of the technology used. As for the comments, there seems to be a big discussion on whether NFC or barcodes (includes QR codes) are the better technology for public transport ticket I have a completely different view: No matter what technology you are using, after having used public transport in multiple cities in Germany with the same flat rate tickets, I wonder if thi…

I'd actually go the other way around. I see a lot more value in getting smaller public transit systems onto a common standard.

Getting set up to use public transit as a visitor to a top tier city like New York, Brussels or Montreal (I can't speak to London) is easy. Usually they have explanatory signage and staffed kiosks at all the major intercity transit stations. And good websites that clearly explain what visitors need to know to navigate the system.

It's visiting a city with a lower-tier transit system that tends to pose a greater challenge. I'm thinking here of cities like St. Louis, Milwaukee or Portland. Stations may not have attendants, automated kiosks may not be well-maintained, websites tend to be ill-designed or be missing key information about how to use the system, etc. And, on top of all that, I'm not necessarily visiting there often enough to amortize the (already relatively high, due to the aforementioned problems) cost of getting to know the system across may visits. And I certainly don't want to have 15 different transit apps and payment accounts to juggle. Standardizing the fare structures and payment systems could be a big boon to visitors.

There's potentially more value to the the smaller transit systems themselves in standardizing, too. None of them is individually a large enough system to achieve good economies of scale w/r/t the technical and administrative costs of maintaining their own special snowflake fare system.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#476

Post by xkcd1963 »

_spduchamp wrote: post #426

OMG! Last time I went to get on the Subway in Montreal, the line up at the station to purchase one of these tickets was crazy long that I just gave up. There was no way to enter the subway by paying directly. You had to purchase one of these tickets. In Toronto, you can just tap your credit card to get on the subway. Also, you see these Montreal cards laying all over the streets. This card system just seems so messed…

Yes but this allows silly transit companies to retroactively charge your CC like in London

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#477

Post by kube-system »

lxgr wrote: post #415
zulban wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you don't see downsides doesn't mean there aren't any. Coins are lost or broken or intentionally damaged, and may need cleaning and staff to handle and transport them. It's not zero waste. In fact I suspect the STM solution may overall have less waste. If you read the article, the chip is the size of a grain of salt. Airline is not just whataboutism. It illustrates the absurdity of scale in your point. I…

> I suspect the STM solution may overall have less waste. If you read the article, the chip is the size of a grain of salt. The antenna isn't, however. In any case, I think there's a pretty high chance these tickets will not end up in a dedicated recycling facility that can properly separate antenna from paper and recycle both, disregarding the chip. For similar reasons, Japan is phasing out even magnetic stripe sing…

> Buying a reusable token doesn't take 20 minutes more than buying a paper ticket.

No, but it could expend 20x the resources, and not be used 20x as much.

As the article mentions, the purpose of these paper tickets is for single-use or short term use, and the system also supports plastic cards for longer term use.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#478

Post by bunderbunder »

hgomersall wrote: post #294
rswail wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in public transport ticketing for the past 30 years including the first system outside Japan (Hong Kong's Octopus). The problem with QR codes: 1. If they're printed, they can be copied. 2. "Dynamic" QR codes can be screenshot. 3. They're read-only (by definition) 4. Readers are slow, require good orientation by the user. NFC is good because it's read/write, has a ~10cm range, the larger cards can hold up…

I don't think the suggestion is the QR code contains the ticket info, but that the QR code is the unique tag into the back end virtual ticket system. 1 to 3 are not relevant in that context, and 4 isn't borne out in my experience with modern readers (they're used in the bar code mix at parkrun and they read time is vanishingly fast with a smart phone, generally better than barcodes). The number of bits might increase…

NFC doesn't necessarily create any additional e-waste. In Chicago we have an NFC system, and people typically just link their phone to their account and use that to pay.

I still use a physical card - so that I have a backup option in case something happens to my phone - but even there the volume of waste is trivial. I've had my current transit card for ages, and it doesn't expire until 2037. It's possible that the only technological decision I've made that generated less e-waste was deciding to splurge on a mechanical watch instead of a quartz model.

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#479

Post by lbourdages »

idunnoman1222 wrote: post #178
lbourdages wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These single use tickets are used essentially only by tourists and those who use public transport only on occasion. The vast majority of users will use rechargeable Opus cards [1] that can contain a variety of different fare types (single tickets, monthly tickets, etc). From an operator's point of view it definitely makes sense to only have to maintain one type of reader, even if that means losing a few cents profit…

That’s not true in Montreal if you buy a single ride you get a paper ticket with a magnetic stripe that you feed into a completely different reader.

I've never seen these mag tickets, the ticket machines all give out Occasionnelle cards even for 1 ticket. Maybe if you walk up to the clerk?

Re: The tiny chip that powers Montreal subway tickets

#480

Post by RF_Savage »

teknologist wrote: post #319
grishka wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the solution is the transportation card is writable, and each train station acts like a small data center. They sync the data periodically to the main data center. That's also how the two subway systems I'm most familiar with do it here in Russia. In both Moscow and St Petersburg, the data stored on the refillable tickets (Troika and Podorozhnik respectively) was thoroughly reverse engineered. People who did it,…

Oyster in London works like this too so I’ve heard. Some terminals (e.g. those on buses) are offline until the terminal is docked and connected to the main centre.

The Helsinki metropolitan area public transit system "HSL" used to be like that. Bus passes were first mifare and the DESfire after some upgrades, but the readers in the busses contained the transactions and worked offline.

If they got filled up the the standard practice was free fares. :)

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