London and Stockholm: swipe your credit card for public transport. Great for visitors (I guess for residents a subscription will be cheaper)
What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them?
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Re: What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them?
#12London and Stockholm: swipe your credit card for public transport. Great for visitors (I guess for residents a subscription will be cheaper)
I don't think so (not a Londoner)
It was my impression that the whole thing was just about simplification in order to provide a better service.
Re: What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them?
#13The Swiss public transport ticketing system. Their app uses location services to automatically determine your fare, so you don’t need to buy tickets in advance: https://www.sbb.ch/en/travel-information/apps/sbb-mobile/eas... . As a bonus there are no ticket barriers so no queues and no overheads of maintaining those machines.
I believe Copenhagen has this too now. I visited in the same week they were launching the system (last year?) and it worked perfectly. All you had to do was press a button on your phone as you enter and leave the station and it automatically calculates what you owe. I loved it. It also worked throughout all of the different train systems.
Re: What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them?
#14The Swiss public transport ticketing system. Their app uses location services to automatically determine your fare, so you don’t need to buy tickets in advance: https://www.sbb.ch/en/travel-information/apps/sbb-mobile/eas... . As a bonus there are no ticket barriers so no queues and no overheads of maintaining those machines.
Certain parts of France and Germany, that I know, use something similar for regional trains and buses: FAIRTIQ
Re: What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them?
#15London and Stockholm: swipe your credit card for public transport. Great for visitors (I guess for residents a subscription will be cheaper)
In London contactless payment via credit/debit/Apple/Android has automatic daily and weekly caps
https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/capping
Depending on the frequency of travel, it can be cheaper to get season tickets though
Re: What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them?
#16The Swiss public transport ticketing system. Their app uses location services to automatically determine your fare, so you don’t need to buy tickets in advance: https://www.sbb.ch/en/travel-information/apps/sbb-mobile/eas... . As a bonus there are no ticket barriers so no queues and no overheads of maintaining those machines.
What an Orwellian nightmare. These systems require real-time GPS data.
Just as buying a ticket with cash is becoming increasingly hard in parts of Europe, I can see a near future where having a phone sending constant GPS updates becomes a requirement (a requirement in an strict sense, or the sense that the alternative is unreasonably cumbersome or more expensive)
Re: What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them?
#17London and Stockholm: swipe your credit card for public transport. Great for visitors (I guess for residents a subscription will be cheaper)
Sydney too, for quite a while (I am sure at least 5 yrs maybe 10)
Re: What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them?
#18App: Fountains in Italy.
Re: What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Queensland, Australia introduced state-wide $0.50 public transit fares a year ago, and it’s been a raging success. Conveniently, this also eliminates the entire problem class of needing to calculate fares. Mind you, for those unfamiliar, QLD is a state 2.5x larger than Texas, 5x larger than all of Japan, 7x larger than Great Britain, and is bigger than all but 16 countries.
I guess size is a factor but also population density, does QLD have way less people per sq.m and does that make it easier to implement stuff like this?
QLD population density is something like 2000x lower than that of Tokyo…
Our public transport systems are so bad.
The Brisbane airport rail connection runs about half as many train services as the Perth airport, which seems about half the amount of travellers each year as Brisbane airport. It’s crazy, double the fare burden, half the patronage, and stuck in a monopoly contract until 2036.
Don’t even get me started on the stupid busways, gimped light rails, the new “metro” and the endless amount poured into the motorways that they have been widening one lane at a time for 3 decades…
Re: What services or apps did you see abroad and wonder: why don't we have them?
#20Old school but all the machines for paying in cash in Japan are so optimized for speed. Train stations, onboard buses, convenience stores. Just throw in a handful of coins and it quickly picks what it needs and returns what it doesn’t.
In other countries (eg australia), the ticket machines could only take a single coin at a time and would reject if you did it too fast.
I believe this is one (of several) reasons why cash has continued to be dominant in Japan.