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Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

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Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#71

Post by akira2501 »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #67
akira2501 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can't stomach a poor person getting to ride the bus for free. If you don't accurately measure ridership you can't accurately serve that ridership. You'll waste money on useless services and you'll waste peoples time by not creating necessary services. The system needs to exist. It probably doesn't need to be outsourced. We're well past the internet revolution and it's time for these core competencies to be reabsorb…

>Ideally it should just be a system that lets you scan your identification card or drivers license. If you're of the correct age it should serve as a transportation pass. Simple. Compliant. Captures useful data. Privacy nightmare, and disenfranchises those with no paperwork.

> Privacy nightmare

The current system doesn't do this somehow? You're taking _public_ transport. Presuming privacy from the operator to be a thing is odd.

> and disenfranchises those with no paperwork.

Then if they want free public transport they should get free papers. I'm not sure the goal of an "identityless public society filled with free rides" is at all worthwhile or even agreed upon to be good.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#72

Post by avianlyric »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #66
avianlyric wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn’t road tax in the UK, only vehicle tax which is based on the about a vehicle pollutes. Additionally all of that tax across the UK goes to the central government, and none of it goes to the London Mayor. There have been attempts to have vehicle taxes collected on London based vehicles be allocated to the Mayor, but it’s always been soundly rejected by central government. Fuel duty is also collected by centra…

I'm from the UK, and lived there for the first 35 years of my life. During that time, 'road tax' was a common way to refer to 'vehicle excise duty'. Doesn't anyone call it that any more? Back to the point, though... Even though the Mayor of London doesn't have control over most tax revenue collected from drivers in London, this whole discussion is about what could be, so suggesting that the congestion and ULEZ charge…

Most of the people refer to VED as “road tax”, it’s usually followed by some sort of condescending comment about how non-drivers should “get off the roads”, and often used as an excuse for engaging in deliberate acts of violence. I’ve personally had people explain to me how being hospitalised for a week, and being given a permanent spinal injury by driver deliberately hitting me while cycling to work, is an acceptable cost to society, and that because I don’t pay “road tax” means I have no right to demand safer cycling conditions on the roads. So I make a point of not calling it “road tax”, because it’s a misleading name. A better name would be a “car pollution tax”, or just a “pollution tax”.

With regards to VED collected in London. Only about £0.5 billion is collected annually from London. Fuel duty does seem to be broken down by region, so it’s hard know how much is collected in London. But across the UK £24 billion of fuel duty is collected annually, so it could be possible to fund a significant chunk of London’s transit by increasing fuel duty by 30-40% across the entire UK. But such an increase would likely also cause riots or similar. Additionally if you were to increase fuel duty like this, you would presumably need to provide free transit across the entire of the UK, which would require a significantly higher fuel duty increase. Of course that tax increase plus free transit, would result in a huge modal shift away from cars, and thus drive down the collected revenue.

In all, there doesn’t seem to be a viable way to provide free transit to all. At least not without significant tax increases across the board, and maybe that’s a viable approach. But there certainly isn’t an easy and obvious no-brainer way to get rid of the “bureaucracy” and use the savings for free transit, as was originally suggested.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#73

Post by avianlyric »

akira2501 wrote: post #71
ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ideally it should just be a system that lets you scan your identification card or drivers license. If you're of the correct age it should serve as a transportation pass. Simple. Compliant. Captures useful data. Privacy nightmare, and disenfranchises those with no paperwork.

> Privacy nightmare The current system doesn't do this somehow? You're taking _public_ transport. Presuming privacy from the operator to be a thing is odd. > and disenfranchises those with no paperwork. Then if they want free public transport they should get free papers. I'm not sure the goal of an "identityless public society filled with free rides" is at all worthwhile or even agreed upon to be good.

What free papers? The UK has no national identity card, so there is no officially recognised “free paper”. Both passports and driving licenses cost money.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#74

Post by avianlyric »

akira2501 wrote: post #45
bdndndndbve wrote: post #6

It's amazing how much bureaucracy they're willing to spend money on to means-test a fundamental service. If you just made transit free at the point of service you wouldn't have free cards for all under 16, and some over 16, and all over 60, and discount fares for people in poverty. Cities spend so much money outsourcing the IT for fare collection, and the administration of budget programs, and ultimately the experien…

> can't stomach a poor person getting to ride the bus for free. If you don't accurately measure ridership you can't accurately serve that ridership. You'll waste money on useless services and you'll waste peoples time by not creating necessary services. The system needs to exist. It probably doesn't need to be outsourced. We're well past the internet revolution and it's time for these core competencies to be reabsorb…

> It probably doesn't need to be outsourced. We're well past the internet revolution and it's time for these core competencies to be reabsorbed by government departments.

TfL’s ticketing system isn’t outsourced, it was built in house and is sold to other transit operators like New York’s MTA.

The UK has no official identification card (something the public have rejected countless times), and in London many people don’t drive and don’t have a driving licence.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#75

Post by avianlyric »

KaiserPro wrote: post #47
bdndndndbve wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a housing policy reset, the OAPs shouldn't have the majority of their retirement assets tied up in a 1.4M illiquid house. They need an affordable off-ramp to downsize, and we need to build more affordable housing to deflate the market. This is wildly unpopular because lots of people are already over-leveraged trying to get onto the property ladder, but objectively it's the correct course to start to unfuck th…

> more affordable housing to deflate the market hard yes > affordable off-ramp to downsize, I mean yes, but the hidden cost is moving outside of your support network. Downsizing is often very lucrative.

> I mean yes, but the hidden cost is moving outside of your support network. Downsizing is often very lucrative.

If we had a sensible housing policy, it would be possible to downsize within your local community. Towns and villages would be made up of a good mix of different types of housing, for different parts of life. Then people could move into appropriately sized houses without having to leave their support networks.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#76

Post by avianlyric »

com wrote: post #54
jen20 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFL are better than most public bodies but are likely hamstrung on being able to pay anything like market rates for competent security people.

Totally get it that budgets are tight. But making sure that stuff happens isn’t highly correlated to tech staff or manager salaries. Unless they’re hiring inexperienced high-schoolers, it’s a failure of will and competence in management. And even that would actually be a failure of managrnent. I’m guessing - based on historic contacts with TfL - that this failure of management is probably manifest in too many meeting…

I’m not really sure how you’ve ended up classifying TfL as a “low-ambition, low-performance” org. As transit agencies go TfL is one of the best on the planet, they’re constantly innovating and pushing the envelope of what’s possible. Every time they build a new line, or order new rolling stock, they use it as an opportunity to invent something new (which doesn’t always succeed). Everything from automated trains, to more complex and capable signaling systems, improved cooling and better customer signage.

A “low-ambition, low-performance” transit organisation doesn’t run train services with a train every 90 seconds at peak, transporting 4 million people per day without a major incident or loss of life. There are nine Underground stations with annual passenger counts larger than the entire BART system in the larger Bay Area.

The Underground system alone (only part of TfL responsibility) is the world fifth largest metro system outside of china by ridership.

TfL built its own ticketing system, and invented the entire idea of using contactless bank cards for ticketing, including negotiating with Visa and Mastercard to create brand new rules for transit agencies. A system that it now sells to other mayor transit systems, such as the New York Subway.

TfL isn’t without faults and problems, like any large public organisation. But to dismiss it as “low-ambition, low-performance” is to ignore many decades of safety operating the worlds oldest metro system, and developing and exporting new ways of improving transit for the travelling public.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#77

Post by rahimnathwani »

avianlyric wrote: post #72
rahimnathwani wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from the UK, and lived there for the first 35 years of my life. During that time, 'road tax' was a common way to refer to 'vehicle excise duty'. Doesn't anyone call it that any more? Back to the point, though... Even though the Mayor of London doesn't have control over most tax revenue collected from drivers in London, this whole discussion is about what could be, so suggesting that the congestion and ULEZ charge…

Most of the people refer to VED as “road tax”, it’s usually followed by some sort of condescending comment about how non-drivers should “get off the roads”, and often used as an excuse for engaging in deliberate acts of violence. I’ve personally had people explain to me how being hospitalised for a week, and being given a permanent spinal injury by driver deliberately hitting me while cycling to work, is an acceptabl…

I agree with the overall point (the last paragraph).

Beyond the math, tube capacity at peak times is an extremely scarce resource, and should be allocated to the most valuable uses: those willing to pay, and under-16s who need it to travel to school. The "Older Person's Freedom Pass" cannot be used before 9am, which seems reasonable to me. I wonder why there's no restriction for the evening rush hour.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#78

Post by avianlyric »

paganel wrote: post #35

> Hundreds of thousands of Londoners are being overcharged for travel, while London Centric spoke to one teenager who is having to skip meals because of cashflow issues brought on by the cyberattack. This is just crazy, why not make public transport as cheap as peanuts to begin with? Why does everything have to be so damn expensive? Why the heck does a monthly transport pass have to cost, let me check, around 200 pou…

> Why don't the common people in the West rise up against this perverted shit? 2400 pounds per year just to have the privilege to take the bus/metro?

Still cheaper than owning a car. The average driver in London pays £3200 a year for the privilege. Most Londoners don’t bother, cars are slowest, most expensive, and least pleasant way to move around the city.

As for the cost, that because a series of Tory governments stripped TfL of all its government funding. TfL has to cover all its cost from fares, advertising, and some other ancillary business. Hence the higher than average ticket prices.

I would also say that there’s nothing wrong with taking the bus/metro. Busses turn up every 5 mins, metros every 90s-180s. Everything is clean, comfortable (we have fabric and padding on our busses and metro seats) and reliable. Although rush hour can get very cramped and sweaty at its peak.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#79

Post by akira2501 »

avianlyric wrote: post #73
akira2501 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Privacy nightmare The current system doesn't do this somehow? You're taking _public_ transport. Presuming privacy from the operator to be a thing is odd. > and disenfranchises those with no paperwork. Then if they want free public transport they should get free papers. I'm not sure the goal of an "identityless public society filled with free rides" is at all worthwhile or even agreed upon to be good.

What free papers? The UK has no national identity card, so there is no officially recognised “free paper”. Both passports and driving licenses cost money.

Then make those free. We can't stand behind other poor implementations as an excuse to avoid appropriate levels of public service. What I'm trying to project is there's no reason to cast this as "people don't want poors riding trains."

Of course people want this. It's absurd to suggest otherwise. Solve actual problems and stop giving contracts to people who abuse the public trust and effectively siphon tax money away from people who need it the most.

The level of argumentation here is bizzare. We can't use IDs because of privacy but we will give them unique smart cards? We can't let them use IDs because those cost money for historical reasons but we will pay a third party for a single use smart card?

This is why people don't engage with public service. It's absolutely punishing for no appreciable reason.

Re: Inside the Transport for London cyberattack

#80

Post by akira2501 »

avianlyric wrote: post #74
akira2501 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can't stomach a poor person getting to ride the bus for free. If you don't accurately measure ridership you can't accurately serve that ridership. You'll waste money on useless services and you'll waste peoples time by not creating necessary services. The system needs to exist. It probably doesn't need to be outsourced. We're well past the internet revolution and it's time for these core competencies to be reabsorb…

> It probably doesn't need to be outsourced. We're well past the internet revolution and it's time for these core competencies to be reabsorbed by government departments. TfL’s ticketing system isn’t outsourced, it was built in house and is sold to other transit operators like New York’s MTA. The UK has no official identification card (something the public have rejected countless times), and in London many people don…

> TfL’s ticketing system isn’t outsourced

The operation of it? Or the development of it? I'm seeing information that conflicts with this statement.

> and in London many people don’t drive and don’t have a driving licence.

My presumptions are rooted in the USA. For those that don't drive having a state ID card is still quite common. These always have barcodes on the back which would make them useful in POS like applications. You'll need a photo ID to cash a check, buy tobacco or alcohol, or when applying for most jobs. It's unusual here to not have one.

Is that also the case in the UK? Is there no similar system or demand for ID? Would those using it in this free application be less likely to have one?

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