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…
A tap card is a nice middle ground. No idea why people are dying to drag so much complexity into a simple transaction.
> Nowadays, the industry would very much like you to ditch your paper ticket in favour of a fancy mobile barcode one (or an ITSO smartcard2); not only do they not have to spend money on printing tickets but they also gain the ability to more precisely track the ticket’s usage across the network and minimise fraud. And unsurprisingly only a subset of tickets are available on the apps. Therefore the government gets its…
Just do away with tickets and apps altogether and scan your national ID card.
Or give everyone a national fare allowance to boot, like the national subsidy for maintenance of roads and their other associated costs.
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
A tangential story from Melbourne - you’re required to replace your Myki every ~7 years because of its shitty implementation, and when you do, it disables auto topup. However, when you get a new card, you also can’t immediately enable auto topup - you have to wait some time until the card is transferred. So a friend of mine had this happen and wasn’t able to touch onto the tram the following morning because they had no balance. Trams don’t have Myki machines, and there was no machine at their stop. Topping up online can take up to 24h. Paper tickets were removed to push Myki. So there was no way for them to pay the fare, but they had to get to work. Of course, ticket inspectors rocked up and fined them. It is genuinely incredible that commuters are expected to either pay a fine or be late to work because of shortcomings in the Myki system.
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…
Why not go all the way and tie your ID, medical info, and online presence to the phone, that way they can cancel your toll pass and life when you inevitably do, say or think something the ruling party doesn't like.
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.
I’m a huge fan of the Pasmo/Suica cards. They’re easy to obtain and easy to accept payments, so uptake is huge (if memory serves me correctly, literally accepted everywhere?). You get most of the benefits of card payments (fast, no fiddling with change, no “do you have a smaller note”), but you also maintain anonymity which is a common argument I hear against cards in Germany and why card payments are so rare there (at least in 2017, I don’t know if the situation has changed).
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…
> Paper tickets rule. Paper tickets suck. It's already a pain having to navigation the station to find your platform, and then add onto it trying to find a ticket machine. Make sure you get the right ticket machine because multiple train companies operate from this station! And then you have to hold on to it for the duration of your journey and not lose it, otherwise you'll face the fine.
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…
Kids these days, how dare they use technology, am I right, fellow luddite on the internet? People lose paper tickets. People throw them on the ground. Stations are littered with them. Oh, and people do spend ages looking through their pockets, bags, coats and other places for where their paper ticket is at. You're just being contrarian because you're on a tech website, tbh.
People lose phones, or steal them, or hack them. Oh, and people do spend ages looking through their pockets, bags, coats, and other places for their phones too. But paper tickets are less likely to be hacked, and don't run out of power.
I don’t know if they do this in the UK, but using apps also gives the government the ability to profit from breakage the same way gift card programs do. The last time I had a public transport app I had to maintain a balance that could expire. The place that implemented this system also prohibited all other forms of payment as a Covid measure, and for some reason hasn’t reverted that policy yet.
In London you can use a normal contactless debit or credit card or NFC payment on a phone for public transport. This is great for Londoners, and even better for visitors who don't need to figure out what they need to buy or how to top up a card. I don't belive the ticket apps being discussed keep a balance, but I haven't used them myself.
I believe that since February 1st (so 4 days ago) you can also use contactless debit and credit cards for train travel throughout the entirety of the Netherlands. I think that most if not all regional public transport providers, for say bus/tram/metro, already support it as well.
Can't use it when you have a subscription though, so a lot of people here will still be using their plastic public transport cards for personal and work travels, including me, but it's nice to have the possibility at least.
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.