London Banter - View Single Post - TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk

Roland Perry · June 26th 14, 04:28 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In message , at 09:52:44
on Thu, 26 Jun 2014, remarked:
FWIW, Merseyrail now accepts payments for paper tickets by
contactless card:

http://www.merseyrail.org/tickets-passes/ticket-information/contactless-payment.aspx

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-24794486

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3512283/merseyrail-completes-deployment-of-contactless-ticket-payment-systems/

http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/Rail-News/merseyrail-introduces-contactless-payment

The latter two articles make it clear that this is contactless
payment being added as an option to ticket offices and to TVMs
(initially at the former, with the latter following later) - so a
much more conventional deployment of the technology compared to
London.

(I can see a quite delightful scope for confusion should TVMs and
ticket offices in London start accepting contactless cards as a means
of paying for conventional paper tickets!)

The big gain is not having to visit a ticket office or ticket machine.
e-Tickets and Print-at-Home do that too. If you've seen the ticket
office/machine queues at Cambridge at times (Saturday morning is often
worst) you'd see why such options are needed.

It's other places as well. Maybe I'm just unlucky but last time I went
through Ely station the ticket queue has 15 people standing in line. At
Nottingham it was routine for the queue at "tickets for other than
today" line to take 20 minutes.
--
Roland Perry