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Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

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Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#181

Post by johnwalkr »

reustle wrote: post #74
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…

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.

I was also going to mention Japan. All highways are tolled and Japan also has virtually zero street parking, and free parking is mostly limited to private lots owned by stores. Of course, the more rural a place you go, the less this generalization is true.

Even if you already own a car, it is in general more expensive, inconvenient and maybe even slower to choose to drive to work. As a general rule of thumb, driving long distances costs about the same as taking the shinkansen for one person, is slower and makes more sense once you have 3+ people in the car.

I think overall this is fair and leads to much better outcomes than US-style "it's my right to drive and park for free where ever I go, but I will fight any proposal to improve or subsidize transit because 'my taxes!'".

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#182

Post by lol768 »

timthorn wrote: post #10

The photo of a UK train ticket is very interesting. Reading Green Park station isn't yet open, AFAIK: https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/RGP/details.html

Seemingly purchased at a Paddington TVM? I'm surprised they allow purchasing that far in advance.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#183

Post by implements »

nly wrote: post #125

The fact that there's a gender field on the ticket is interesting.

Sometimes people give one-day unlimited travel tickets they no longer need to other passengers as they leave the station, which is at least against the terms of issue if not actually illegal.

I guess having a sex / gender field makes that kind of re-use slightly harder?

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#184

Post by ghaff »

michaelt wrote: post #167
nprateem wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's your responsibility to produce a ticket. Claiming your dog ate it or whatever will just mean they make you buy a new ticket and apply for a refund if you find your original again. They've heard these things before.

So you say - but I've repeatedly seen people allowed to exit through the ticket barriers at my local train station with nothing but a powered off phone as a 'ticket'

And arguably that's a reasonable response from a policy perspective so long as a small minority of people are actively grifting.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#185

Post by vageli »

exikyut wrote: post #174
vlovich123 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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??

It is a feature in iOS called Express Cards: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/express-cards-with-...

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#186

Post by ghaff »

IanCal wrote: post #11
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…

Have you ever actually been on a train in the UK? Ticket inspectors will go on to do anyone that's ready and come back - they're not bemused by someone without their ticket ready. And people constantly also fumble for their tickets then present an old ticket, then the return instead of the outgoing one, then the seat reservation not the ticket etc. My local station doesn't sell tickets. It has no office. I can buy an…

I don't remember it being so bad on my last trip, but a number of years back two of us were doing a long distance walk in England. I remember train tickets being this exercise of "Which of these cards are the right ones to feed into the turnstile?" while people were piling up behind us.

In general, transit systems do a pretty terrible job of usability testing for people who aren't so used to the system that it's second nature and may not even read the language.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#187

Post by andrepd »

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…

>tolls are expensive

Well do you know what's expensive? Highways. In the US less than 20c of every dollar come from road tax/fuel tax/tolls. The rest is paid by taxpayers, whether or not they use those roads, whether or not they drive, whether they drive a 3.5 ton SUV or a 1 ton "small" car. This is not even getting into the terrible externalities that car use entails.

Personal automobiles pay far too little.

>tolls should cease after initial amount is paid

A good ballpark is every ~30 years you spend, in maintenance, the same amount of money it took to build it in the first place.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#188

Post by andrepd »

johnwalkr wrote: post #181
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.

I was also going to mention Japan. All highways are tolled and Japan also has virtually zero street parking, and free parking is mostly limited to private lots owned by stores. Of course, the more rural a place you go, the less this generalization is true. Even if you already own a car, it is in general more expensive, inconvenient and maybe even slower to choose to drive to work. As a general rule of thumb, driving…

Hit the nail on the head. If only my country followed that model x)

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#190

Post by numbasys »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #177
lxgr wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a good point and another reason to encourage it. It would boost rail over road, which makes far more sense.
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