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Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

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Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#101

Post by mnd999 »

Symbiote wrote: post #85
fuzzfactor wrote: post #49

On the Florida Turnpike it was always too expensive for many students when they traveled up and down the state. It was bad enough having captive service stations and restaurants for overpriced products, but the toll was and still is ridiculous too, considering it was agreed there would be no toll after the construction was paid for, And it was well paid for decades ago. Anyway there were only very few exits and they…

There was a discussion on a different post pointing out that maintenance of a highway is still very costly. Charging only the users, rather than all taxpayers, appears very fair.

Superficially maybe, but it's much more complicated than that. When an efficient public transport exists between two places there are derivative economic benefits all round, a larger pool of employees for businesses in A, more demand for housing in B etc.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#102

Post by kalleboo »

netsharc wrote: post #58
totetsu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I miss remembering or can the nfc mobile train passes in Japan be used even with a dead battery?

Sounds like an iPhone feature: https://www.techradar.com/news/apples-iphone-xs-has-a-game-c... The Pasmo/Suica cards are intriguing, they are NFC, but also store the last few transactions on the card itself, there are also mobile apps for scanning these cards to see how much credit you have left and list the above-mentioned transactions.

My Japanese feature phone back in 2009 could also use Mobile Suica with a dead battery. I believe at the time the NFC wasn't active like on the iPhone but a passive "card" that was reprogrammed by the phone and didn't need power.

The iPhone only got this "power reserve" recently.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#103

Post by vlovich123 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #22
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #21

During the COVID outbreak, my public transit provider began to neglect their fareboxes (partly because everyone was boarding in the rear and didn't bother to pay fares anyway.) I noticed that the boxes were still broken and unmaintained. I put 2 and 2 together and realized that a mobile "upgrade" was coming soon, so I kept my eyes out. And sure enough, I got myself invited to participate in the pilot project with the…

> Of course it goes without saying that your phone must be functional in order to scan the thing. So that's a whole tech stack that could go awry and strand you if you don't take precautions It could go awry if Google fucked up, Samsung/phone manufacturer fucks up, battery or charger fucks up, software developer fucks up, internet, etc, etc. we are replacing reliable sustems with fragile ones everywhere

My iPhone supports transit passes even when the battery is dead. I don’t think this is an intractable problem and indeed the designers of NFC designed for this problem: the NFC payment system provides the juice required for the SE chip to do it’s thing.

QR code as transit passes aren’t great but eventually the worse designs will fade out. NFC is a way superior piece of tech and way faster too - just tap your phone and go. I was pleasantly surprised that transfers worked seamlessly this way too.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#104

Post by erpellan »

paganel wrote: post #93
reustle wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to live in the US and currently live in Japan. We pay around $95 to go about 5 hours on a highway from Tokyo to Kyoto, for example. 3~ hours north is about $35. I think this more accurately charges us drivers for the resources we consume.

It also adds to the price of food that gets transported from one place to another, and, as such, acts as a regressive tax on people who pay the biggest part of their income on their basic needs (like food). That's one of the main reasons why I don't get the "death to cars!" movement and why I regard it as mostly middle-class privileged discourse: no cars means fewer or worst roads, means food being a lot more expensi…

A truck can carry 10 or 20 times more cargo than a car. The truck toll is not 20x more.

The movement to reduce car use is about replacing them with better alternatives such as efficient local public transport and high speed rail, not going back to travelling on horseback.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#105

Post by snordgren »

paganel wrote: post #93
reustle wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to live in the US and currently live in Japan. We pay around $95 to go about 5 hours on a highway from Tokyo to Kyoto, for example. 3~ hours north is about $35. I think this more accurately charges us drivers for the resources we consume.

It also adds to the price of food that gets transported from one place to another, and, as such, acts as a regressive tax on people who pay the biggest part of their income on their basic needs (like food). That's one of the main reasons why I don't get the "death to cars!" movement and why I regard it as mostly middle-class privileged discourse: no cars means fewer or worst roads, means food being a lot more expensi…

Road transport of goods accounts for a majority of wear on the roads. Rail is naturally more cumbersome because railroads are less ubiquitous than roads, but it is much more efficient in terms of both energy usage and labor.

If we subsidize road transport by letting tax payers or commuters pay for their road wear and tear, we end up with more road transport at the cost of more labor and more energy use. That's deadweight loss caused by the government distorting the market with road subsidies.

Road transport should be used where its flexibility gives it a competitive advantage, not be the default because taxpayers subsidize it.

One way to compensate lower-income earners for higher food prices is to lower taxes for those with low incomes, making the tax rate more progressive. Another is to reduce VAT for basic needs products like food.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#106

Post by xdfgh1112 »

mnd999 wrote: post #99
plugin-baby wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How have mobile tickets stopped this? Wasn’t it always against the rules, even if possible when the middle station lacked barriers?

No, this was always part of the rules - unless you have an Advance ticket. And as far as I know that is still the case.

I tried to use an off peak QR code ticket and it did not pass the gates and I was told I wasn't allowed to do it, the ticket rules did not mention it either.

It is possible the staff just didn't know about the break in journey rule, I was too tired to fight it at the time.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#108

Post by sschueller »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #2

Nobody who cheers "mobile tickets" has ever watched a guard or ticket inspector do their job. In the UK, a guard with good eyesight and a sprightly, cheerful manner can almost run through the carriages shouting "tickets please!" and see, with a single glance, all s/he needs. Then she gets to the muppets with phones. They faff, fumble and fuss. They scowl at being interrupted watching videos, browsing social media and…

This was an issue in Switzerland initially with the introduction of the SwissPass (very ugly looking thing, at least the new one looks a bit better [1]) which no longer showed what it was (the old Abonement cards where translucent [2]) but was a card with a photo on it and you would have a ticket connected to that card which the conductor could check with their smartphones either via NFC or the qr-code on the back. The Samsung phones that where issues where slow to scan the cards via NFC.

Today you can also have everything on your phone which then gets scanned withe QR-Code. BTW, this code changes every few seconds so screenshots don't work. You can also instead of purchasing a ticket do something that is called "check-in" where you check-in before you get on the train and a GPS type ticket is issues. At the end of the day the best possible rate for you is then calculated and your are billed. Downside is, you need to be "tracked" by the train company for this to work.

However the process to inspect tickets is again as fast or faster than it was before. In fact when someone has paper tickets (specifically papers from non-Swiss ticket offices (France, Italy etc.)) it can take longer.

There is also a rule if you can't present your ticket in a timely manner it's considered invalid. This never happens but when the conductor yells tickets please, get your phone out.

[1] https://www.swisspass.ch/new-swisspass?lang=en

[2] https://hymnos.existenz.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/DSC037...

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#109

Post by switch007 »

plugin-baby wrote: post #96
xdfgh1112 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With mobile tickets I've also lost the ability to break my journey up (i.e. visit somewhere half way along a route without having to buy two tickets) which has increased the price of my journeys.

How have mobile tickets stopped this? Wasn’t it always against the rules, even if possible when the middle station lacked barriers?

> Wasn’t it always against the rules

No. Many return fares explicitly allow a break of journey - especially non-advance fares.

It is the introduction of single-only fares which will have a greater impact than mobile fares.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#110

Post by michaelt »

> they also gain the ability to more precisely track the ticket’s usage across the network and minimise fraud.

Except mobile tickets make fraud trivial - getting off the train without a ticket, at a station with a ticket barrier? Just show them your powered off phone and say 'my phone died' and they'll let you out, no questions asked.

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