In message , at 12:01:48 on
Mon, 19 May 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:
On Sun, 18 May 2014 12:57:09 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 17:31:03 on
Sat, 17 May 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:
But when? A Cambridge Guided Bus "late Summer", or something else?

I still expect the rail mode rollout to happen in June or July -
barring the discovery of some system nasties in the trial. Hopefully
TfL and their contractors have debugged the system sufficiently to
avoid this happening.

Let's compare notes early August.

Why? - so you can go "nerr, nerr told you I was right about the
timing?"

Not at all. One of the topics which fascinates me is "vapourware", and I
collect examples of it. When it comes to transport ticketing it's like
shooting fish in a barrel, unfortunately.

You dreadful old cynic you. I thought *I* was bad.

Last November the Standard reported (and they'd only have said it if
officially briefed):

Five thousand Londoners will become the first commuters on the
Tube to use the contactless system in a two-month pilot.

Already accepted on buses, it will then be fully introduced on
the Tube, DLR and London Overground in early summer 2014.

Meanwhile other industry media reported (this April):

[Tfl] had planned to be ready by this summer after delaying the
launch from the end of last year. But it now says it will be
ready only later this year.

Back in May 2011, people were even more optimistic:

In early 2012, ahead of the Games, passengers will be able to
use their bank-issued contactless debit and credit cards to pay
for their travel directly on all of London's 8,500 buses. This
alternative method of fare payment will be rolled out to the
rest of the transport network in London later that year.

[As we know, the rollout to just the buses was delayed until Dec 2012,
six months *after* the Olympics.]

We're both guessing as neither of us know what issues, if any, have
turned up in the trial. All I know is that TfL stated that roll out
would be 6 weeks after the trial ends assuming no serious issues were
found in the trial.

And I'm saying that the trial has perhaps not ended, and that we are way
past the two months mentioned above. Especially if they are still
recruiting new people.

Either that, or the attempt to recruit new people is a new layer of
cock-up, and if I replied I'd be told "sorry, we aren't accepting new
people".

You say it is cock up.

Sending me an invitation (for a trial that may in fact be closed).

An alternative view is risk management and avoiding a public relations
disaster.

That's one possibility for the delays to the trialdeployment.

I think that sat behind the Olympics decision - why launch something
new if you are not 110% confident it will work or that would not accept
bank cards held by foreign visitors?

Even when it launched they were saying it wouldn't accept foreign cards.
How did they get themselves into that predicament; wouldn't
acceptability of cards be one of those things you could work out on
paper way ahead of actually deploying hardware around the system?

You just need to talk to the Card Issuer's equivalent of ATOC.

TfL have publicly stated that DfT demands to complete the ITSO work
caused a diversion of project resource away from CBC workstream.

Perhaps that's because in the "bigger picture" a lot of TOCs have egg on
their face having promised acceptability of their ITSO tickets on the
tube ages ago.

We then had the nonsense with both the 2013 and 2014 Fares Revisions
being delayed. TfL have been clear that the latter caused a programme
delay to the CBC workstream and delayed the trial.

Does this mean the delays are all to do with software, not hardware?

What was in the Fares Revision that might have caused algorithms to have
to be reviewed, rather than simply plumbing in a few new numbers for the
actual fares? Was it the withdrawal of Z12 Travelcards, for example.

If there was to be a reasonable criticism then perhaps it is the
handling of public announcements of possible introduction dates.

Agreed 100%, and that's *precisely* where the Vapourware aspect comes
in.
--
Roland Perry