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Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

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Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#171

Post by iso1631 »

jonwinstanley wrote: post #144
ornornor wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but it was long ago and people forgot. But yes, French citizens are paying for the autoroutes twice: built with public money and then again with tolls to use them.

Sure, you may multiple times but they don't just get built once either. There is non-stop maintenance for a road system.

There's maintenence in local roads too. And maintence is broadly relative to the damage caused, which is relative to the 4th power of axel weight. A 30 ton truck will cause thousands of times the damage of a 2 ton car, but doesn't pay thousands of times the price.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#172

Post by tazjin »

wodenokoto wrote: post #70
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…

The best tech solution I’ve yet to see is simply accepting credit/debit cards. Checking in, they can charge you minimum fare and checking out they can charge you remainder. They could also charge you maximum fare and return remainder on checkout. You can even keep track of card and give discounts for multiple rides. All without registration. Works with watches and phones too.

Moscow metro does this. In very busy stations only the turnstiles at the sides have this functionality though, as the native NFC cards ("Тройка") are much faster (contactless payments can take O(seconds), which is a lot when there's 50k people trying to get through).

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#173

Post by turnerc »

odiroot wrote: post #145
nly wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price on the ticket is also £1.90M

Which is weird because the minimal fare is £2.20 now.

I believe the minimum fare is the price before any discounts applied, a railcard on 1.90 would be a normal price of ~£2.84

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#174

Post by exikyut »

vlovich123 wrote: post #103
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 an…

Wow. Where are the API docs for this??

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#175

Post by tobylane »

Symbiote wrote: post #86
wodenokoto wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best tech solution I’ve yet to see is simply accepting credit/debit cards. Checking in, they can charge you minimum fare and checking out they can charge you remainder. They could also charge you maximum fare and return remainder on checkout. You can even keep track of card and give discounts for multiple rides. All without registration. Works with watches and phones too.

The London system makes a single charge at the end of each day, to reduce possible fees incurred by foreign cards etc. I think they set up a special protocol with Visa and Mastercard to allow this.

> I think they set up a special protocol with Visa and Mastercard to allow this.

Yes, called Contactless Transit Framework. https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/policy-and-guidance/reports-pub...

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#176

Post by Eisenstein »

gadders wrote: post #146
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…

>>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. Same with the QE2 bridge in the UK. Governments are disgusting. https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/dartford-crossing...

> And it was well paid for decades ago.

What happens when you build a road and declare it done and then never deal with it again? Does it continue to work as a road after a few years?

> Governments are disgusting.

Who builds roads?

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#177

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

lxgr wrote: post #158
bboygravity wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in countries with and without toll. I feel the no toll approach is better. Most importantly because no toll means (the feeling of) more privacy, toll means you're being tracked. Regardless of law we all know that everything eveywhere gets stored indefinitely independent of country (if not legally then illegally if not by the toll org then by the secret service). Secondly the country I was in with the toll…

Another option is to just tax fuel, which has the nice side effect of being roughly proportionate to actual road usage and pollution.

That would have been better in the past, but doesn't work so well with electric vehicles.

Ideally, vehicles should be charged in relation to approximately the fourth power of their weight as that is proportional to the road damage. However, that will drastically change the economics of logistics companies.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#178

Post by ghaff »

plugin-baby wrote: post #126
mnd999 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's still in the conditions of carriage ( https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/National%20Rail%20Conditions%... ) - Section 16. I don't think gate line staff are well trained on stuff like this though.

> You may also end your journey (in either direction in the case of a return Ticket) before the destination shown on the Ticket. TIL, thanks! On a related note, I found out the hard way that (some?) airlines don’t let you use a return flight if you missed the outbound leg.

Yes, airlines will typically cancel the whole trip if you just don't show up for the outbound leg.

I have, on rare occasions, not shown up for the return flight because just buying a new one-way ticket for a new date/time was cheaper than rescheduling the existing return leg. I don't think you're actually supposed to do that either.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#179

Post by ghaff »

lbriner wrote: post #159
plugin-baby wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may also end your journey (in either direction in the case of a return Ticket) before the destination shown on the Ticket. TIL, thanks! On a related note, I found out the hard way that (some?) airlines don’t let you use a return flight if you missed the outbound leg.

Yeah, I missed my outbound Air Canada flight at LHR after my coach broke down and when I asked about getting a ticket for a later flight, the rep told me that they "weren't supposed to" sell returns if you weren't planning to use both legs even though they were cheaper than a single but she sold me one anyway, just told me to make-up a return leg and then just don't turn up! Pretty bad really, I guess an example of w…

In my experience, travel between Europe and the US is particularly random. Sometimes, open jaw flights are perfectly fine in terms of pricing. Other times, I've had to jump through hoops of one sort or another to do a round-trip from a single city because one-way flights were so expensive relative to the round trip.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#180

Post by Operyl »

madeofpalk wrote: post #164
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…

> Since the mobile passes are QR-based and not NFC, they absolutely require WAN connectivity on both sides in order to activate a pass. Why they rolling out QR-based public transit ticketing in 2023 when NFC (which all phone platforms support even with a flat battery) solutions are table-stakes now?

Lowest bidder, government procurement is fun.
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