The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On Sat, 26 Apr 2014 07:33:21 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
It is not widely known that, while the rest of the Civil Service is
headed by people from many universities, the Treasury is almost wholly
Oxbridge.

Doesn't surprise me. Most of the chinless wonders seem to float to the top.
I wonder if any of them actually have economics or maths degrees or its
just a swathe of useless liberal arts degrees.

--
Spud

Looking ahead to National PAYG (was Oyster: still an unreliablerip-off)
 

On 26/04/2014 11:37, wrote:

Surely it's time that train operators were required to offer passengers the
cheapest fares, allowing for options like this and have done with it?

Because only tight-fisted anoraks would do (say) Cambridge - London via
Ipswich, splitting tickets at every halt, arriving a fortnight on
Tuesday but saving 5p on the direct train which is just about to depart.
But somebody somewhere would no doubt complain if the ticket clerk
didn't do the calculations at 7.30am on a Monday.

Selling the cheapest A-Z ticket is a lot easier than than crunching
through every intermediate option vis B, C, D etc.

Why
should only those good at gaming the system benefit?

So we get some benefit from our anorakdom?

It's overcharging by
stealth which shouldn't be allowed.

I think people should be very careful what they wish for - eg would we
happy to lose "any reasonable" route in its fossilised "any permitted"
form in favour of tightly nailed-downing routings, which might be likely
to follow any crackdown on the ability to save by splitting tickets?
Would we want the industry to lose the ability to fiddle around with
fares to try to grow specific markets?


--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 26/04/2014 18:47, d wrote:
On Sat, 26 Apr 2014 07:33:21 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
It is not widely known that, while the rest of the Civil Service is
headed by people from many universities, the Treasury is almost wholly
Oxbridge.

Doesn't surprise me. Most of the chinless wonders seem to float to the top.
I wonder if any of them actually have economics or maths degrees or its
just a swathe of useless liberal arts degrees.

--
Spud

Hey! My degree was in European Studies, then again it was from UEA.
Unsurprisingly, my destiny was the blackboard jungle.

--
Myth, after all, is what we believe naturally. History is what we must
painfully learn and struggle to remember. -Albert Goldman

Looking ahead to National PAYG (was Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off)
 

In message , at
21:18:38 on Sat, 26 Apr 2014, Arthur Figgis
remarked:
Surely it's time that train operators were required to offer passengers the
cheapest fares, allowing for options like this and have done with it?

Because only tight-fisted anoraks would do (say) Cambridge - London via
Ipswich, splitting tickets at every halt, arriving a fortnight on
Tuesday but saving 5p on the direct train which is just about to
depart. But somebody somewhere would no doubt complain if the ticket
clerk didn't do the calculations at 7.30am on a Monday.

Selling the cheapest A-Z ticket is a lot easier than than crunching
through every intermediate option vis B, C, D etc.

But the splits are often "obvious". If the passenger is getting a train
on a 1tph route, and has asked to leave at (say) 8.30am [they are likely
to have been asked this already] then splitting the tickets peak/offpeak
at a station a little over half an hour away is pretty straightforward.

I think people should be very careful what they wish for - eg would we
happy to lose "any reasonable" route in its fossilised "any permitted"
form in favour of tightly nailed-downing routings, which might be
likely to follow any crackdown on the ability to save by splitting
tickets?

While splitting tickets does nail down one of the points en-route, it
doesn't always introduce a routing inflexibility. From Great Anglia
territory, for example, all "not London" route to the Midlands and
beyond go via Peterborough. So splitting tickets there is not going to
be a problem.

Would we want the industry to lose the ability to fiddle around with
fares to try to grow specific markets?

That's a more significant issue, although sometimes these "specific
markets" don't seem to make a lot so sense. For example from Cambridge
to Birmingham by XC there's often a draught of AP tickets, but splitting
them at Peterborough then releases a pair of tickets on the self same
train, Cambridge to Peterborough, then Peterborough-Birmingham.
--
Roland Perry

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On Sun, 27 Apr 2014 07:25:37 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
On 26/04/2014 18:47, d wrote:
On Sat, 26 Apr 2014 07:33:21 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
It is not widely known that, while the rest of the Civil Service is
headed by people from many universities, the Treasury is almost wholly
Oxbridge.

Doesn't surprise me. Most of the chinless wonders seem to float to the top.
I wonder if any of them actually have economics or maths degrees or its
just a swathe of useless liberal arts degrees.

--
Spud

Hey! My degree was in European Studies, then again it was from UEA.

I visited UEA once. Actually seemed like a nice place to me, don't know why
people slag it off. European studies? Oh well, someone has to I suppose.

--
Spud

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

wrote in message
...
On Sun, 27 Apr 2014 07:25:37 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
On 26/04/2014 18:47, d wrote:
On Sat, 26 Apr 2014 07:33:21 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
It is not widely known that, while the rest of the Civil Service is
headed by people from many universities, the Treasury is almost wholly
Oxbridge.

Doesn't surprise me. Most of the chinless wonders seem to float to the
top.
I wonder if any of them actually have economics or maths degrees or its
just a swathe of useless liberal arts degrees.

--
Spud

Hey! My degree was in European Studies, then again it was from UEA.

I visited UEA once. Actually seemed like a nice place to me, don't know
why
people slag it off. European studies? Oh well, someone has to I suppose.

Wasn't it one of those places that got a bad rep for attracting "radicals"

tim

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 27/04/2014 10:39, d wrote:
On Sun, 27 Apr 2014 07:25:37 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
On 26/04/2014 18:47, d wrote:
On Sat, 26 Apr 2014 07:33:21 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
It is not widely known that, while the rest of the Civil Service is
headed by people from many universities, the Treasury is almost wholly
Oxbridge.

Doesn't surprise me. Most of the chinless wonders seem to float to the top.
I wonder if any of them actually have economics or maths degrees or its
just a swathe of useless liberal arts degrees.

--
Spud

Hey! My degree was in European Studies, then again it was from UEA.

I visited UEA once. Actually seemed like a nice place to me, don't know why
people slag it off. European studies? Oh well, someone has to I suppose.

--
Spud


They've changed the system now. It has faculties, not schools of studies.

--
Myth, after all, is what we believe naturally. History is what we must
painfully learn and struggle to remember. -Albert Goldman

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 27/04/2014 14:34, tim..... wrote:


wrote in message
...
On Sun, 27 Apr 2014 07:25:37 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
On 26/04/2014 18:47, d wrote:
On Sat, 26 Apr 2014 07:33:21 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
It is not widely known that, while the rest of the Civil Service is
headed by people from many universities, the Treasury is almost wholly
Oxbridge.

Doesn't surprise me. Most of the chinless wonders seem to float to
the top.
I wonder if any of them actually have economics or maths degrees or its
just a swathe of useless liberal arts degrees.

--
Spud

Hey! My degree was in European Studies, then again it was from UEA.

I visited UEA once. Actually seemed like a nice place to me, don't
know why
people slag it off. European studies? Oh well, someone has to I suppose.

Wasn't it one of those places that got a bad rep for attracting "radicals"

tim


A bit, but Essex was the main one. Socially it was dominated by alumni
of the minor public schools.

--
Myth, after all, is what we believe naturally. History is what we must
painfully learn and struggle to remember. -Albert Goldman

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 2014-04-26 18:47, d wrote:
On Sat, 26 Apr 2014 07:33:21 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
It is not widely known that, while the rest of the Civil Service is
headed by people from many universities, the Treasury is almost wholly
Oxbridge.

Doesn't surprise me. Most of the chinless wonders seem to float to the top.

Patronage and nepotism.

I wonder if any of them actually have economics or maths degrees or its
just a swathe of useless liberal arts degrees.

It doesn't much matter, it's only a jobclub for the aristocracy's
surplus offspring. (See also banks, BBC.)

All of the recent studies summarised in these links are also relevant to
the UK despite their apparent US slant:

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10181.html

http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...american-dream

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...concludes.html

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 28/04/2014 07:41, Hils wrote:
On 2014-04-26 18:47, d wrote:
On Sat, 26 Apr 2014 07:33:21 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
It is not widely known that, while the rest of the Civil Service is
headed by people from many universities, the Treasury is almost wholly
Oxbridge.

Doesn't surprise me. Most of the chinless wonders seem to float to the top.

Patronage and nepotism.

I wonder if any of them actually have economics or maths degrees or its
just a swathe of useless liberal arts degrees.

It doesn't much matter, it's only a jobclub for the aristocracy's
surplus offspring. (See also banks, BBC.)


What's it like living in 1910?


--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.
Railway Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 2014-04-28 08:34, Graeme Wall wrote:
On 28/04/2014 07:41, Hils wrote:
On 2014-04-26 18:47, d wrote:
On Sat, 26 Apr 2014 07:33:21 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
It is not widely known that, while the rest of the Civil Service is
headed by people from many universities, the Treasury is almost wholly
Oxbridge.

Doesn't surprise me. Most of the chinless wonders seem to float to
the top.

Patronage and nepotism.

I wonder if any of them actually have economics or maths degrees or its
just a swathe of useless liberal arts degrees.

It doesn't much matter, it's only a jobclub for the aristocracy's
surplus offspring. (See also banks, BBC.)

What's it like living in 1910?

Perhaps you missed the study showing that there was more social mobility
in Britain in the 12th century than there is in the 21st. Perhaps you've
missed Piketty's surprise best-seller saying much the same thing.

From a summary of Piketty's work in today's Guardian: "those who have
family fortunes are the winners, and everyone else doesn't have much of
a shot of being wealthy unless they marry into or inherit money. [...]
No one else can ever catch up."

Actually a few people can catch up, by using laws intended to protect
wealthy families: primarily property parasites and bankers.

Another recent study shows that almost all laws enacted in the US favour
very wealthy individuals and corporations. In Britain such laws have
been in place for centuries.

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 28/04/2014 09:42, Hils wrote:
On 2014-04-28 08:34, Graeme Wall wrote:
On 28/04/2014 07:41, Hils wrote:
On 2014-04-26 18:47, d wrote:
On Sat, 26 Apr 2014 07:33:21 +0100
Martin Edwards wrote:
It is not widely known that, while the rest of the Civil Service is
headed by people from many universities, the Treasury is almost wholly
Oxbridge.

Doesn't surprise me. Most of the chinless wonders seem to float to
the top.

Patronage and nepotism.

I wonder if any of them actually have economics or maths degrees or its
just a swathe of useless liberal arts degrees.

It doesn't much matter, it's only a jobclub for the aristocracy's
surplus offspring. (See also banks, BBC.)

What's it like living in 1910?

Perhaps you missed the study showing that there was more social mobility
in Britain in the 12th century than there is in the 21st.

Wasn't so much society to be mobile in back then.

Perhaps you've
missed Piketty's surprise best-seller saying much the same thing.

From a summary of Piketty's work in today's Guardian: "those who have
family fortunes are the winners, and everyone else doesn't have much of
a shot of being wealthy unless they marry into or inherit money. [...]
No one else can ever catch up."

Lovely piece of selective quoting.


Actually a few people can catch up, by using laws intended to protect
wealthy families: primarily property parasites and bankers.

Another recent study shows that almost all laws enacted in the US favour
very wealthy individuals and corporations. In Britain such laws have
been in place for centuries.


Again,lovely piece of misdirection.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.
Railway Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 2014-04-28 10:45, Graeme Wall wrote:
From a summary of Piketty's work in today's Guardian: "those who have
family fortunes are the winners, and everyone else doesn't have much of
a shot of being wealthy unless they marry into or inherit money. [...]
No one else can ever catch up."

Lovely piece of selective quoting.

I'm happy for interested readers to read the sources and make their own
conclusions, but here's a snippet from Piketty himself:

“It’s very difficult to make a democratic system work when you have such
extreme inequality” in income, he said, “and such extreme inequality in
terms of political influence and the production of knowledge and
information. One of the big lessons of the 20th century is that we don’t
need 19th-century inequality to grow.” But that’s just where the
capitalist world is heading again, he concludes. [...]

He favors a progressive global tax on real wealth (minus debt), with the
proceeds not handed to inefficient governments but redistributed to
those with less capital. “We just want a way to share the tax burden
that is fair and practical,” he said." [1]

[1]
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/bu...karl-marx.html

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 28/04/2014 10:56, Hils wrote:
On 2014-04-28 10:45, Graeme Wall wrote:
From a summary of Piketty's work in today's Guardian: "those who have
family fortunes are the winners, and everyone else doesn't have much of
a shot of being wealthy unless they marry into or inherit money. [...]
No one else can ever catch up."

Lovely piece of selective quoting.

I'm happy for interested readers to read the sources and make their own
conclusions, but here's a snippet from Piketty himself:

“It’s very difficult to make a democratic system work when you have such
extreme inequality” in income, he said, “and such extreme inequality in
terms of political influence and the production of knowledge and
information. One of the big lessons of the 20th century is that we don’t
need 19th-century inequality to grow.” But that’s just where the
capitalist world is heading again, he concludes. [...]

He favors a progressive global tax on real wealth (minus debt), with the
proceeds not handed to inefficient governments but redistributed to
those with less capital. “We just want a way to share the tax burden
that is fair and practical,” he said." [1]

[1]
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/bu...karl-marx.html


You do have to realise he is primarily talking about the USA, though he
does expand to notionaly cover the "English Speaking World" That, in
itself, is something of a French construct as it should cover such major
economies as India and the Dominios. Also, to a lesser extent, African
and other Commonwealth countries. However the French regard it as
referring to the UK, USA and those bits of occupied Canada west of
Quebec. The more advanced may have heard of Australia.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.
Railway Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

So your point is the same as mine, that it really sucks that you have to
notice these problems yourself before anything gets done?

4 issues in the entire lifetime of the Oyster scheme, 1 would have been fixed automatically if I had done nothing, one was my own fault. The other two were delays taking the journey over 2 hours.

That's far fewer issues than with paper travel cards which neeeded replacing at least once in their lifetime if not twice.

Things go wrong with any system, give me Oyster any day.

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 10:47:36AM -0500, wrote:

I think you exaggerate somewhat. The gates that tell are easy enough to with
minimal delay. Most in central London don't give out the information though.

I do not.

I've decided to use Oyster for a month to see whether it's cheaper than
a Travelcard. This morning, I made a point of checking what the gate
said at Thornton Heath.

It said, when I entered the station:

Exit

number (number)

And this was displayed very low down so I could only see it clearly if I
stood back.

--
David Cantrell | Nth greatest programmer in the world

In Victorian times, when every man wore a beard the size of a yew,
Britain ruled the world. In the early 20th century, when the beard
was trimmed to a moustache, we scraped through two world wars but
lost an empire. Today, when Mach3 Turbo multi-blades are the norm,
our national pride derives largely from beating the Swedes at
Olympic cycling.

Grow a beard. Your country needs you.

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 02:52:00PM +0100, David Walters wrote:

The older pneumatic gates should have a display on exit like the one
in http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ter-Reader.jpg

Such high contrast! So close to the eye-line! That huge text!

--
David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

I hate baby seals. They get asked to all the best clubs.

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 01:26:55AM -0500, wrote:

Go through a gate that opens in front of you and discover the touch hasn't
been registered, giving an unresolved journey. My wife got two out of two
from King's Cross to Westminster and back in 2011.

That's happened to me twice in the last coupla weeks now. The first
time, TfL seem to have needed me to phone them, the second they seem to
have magically worked it out anyway despite it being far less obvious
what I actually did:

Thu 24 Apr
19:06 touch in, Aldgate East, cost: GBP5.10
19:23 touch out, Victoria tube, refund: GBP2.95
19:25 touch in, Victoria NR, cost: GBP2.95
[no touch out]

so my touch out at Thornton Heath went missing. But my journey history
says:

19:06 - ???? Aldgate East to [No touch-out], cost: GBP5.10

Which is apparently the right amount.

So they can figure out, presumably based on my previous journeys, that I
ended up at Thornton Heath, despite there being no record of this, and
despite it being entirely possible that I got off at, say, Clapham
Junction (which would have been cheaper) or East Croydon (which would
have been more expensive). That is, they can make educated guesses about
what I actually did when their* equipment failed.

But presented with a journey history like this:

Touch in Waterloo tube
[missing touch out]
Touch in Balham NR
Touch out Thornton Heath

They can't automagically figure out what is obvious - that I changed
trains at Balham, from the Northern line to Southern. That they can
resolve one of these but not the other makes no sense.

* let me pre-empt the annoying pedants and their "wah wah wah it's
Southern's equipment, not TfL's". I don't care. It's "the Oyster
system". You know, the thing marketed at us as being a single
single payment system made of unicorns and pixie dust.

--
David Cantrell | Official London Perl Mongers Bad Influence

Sobol's Law of Telecom Utilities:
Telcos are malicious; cablecos are simply clueless.

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 07:55:11PM +0100, Richard wrote:

Then I'll add another item to my "requirements", something I thought
of today and David Cantrell mentioned: make sure that NR stations can
do basic Oyster operations.

I've been banging on about this for years. Having them only available
from shops that aren't open when you need to travel and which can't be
seen from the station (and which also can't fix problems) is just silly.

There is, I think, only one system that
can, predictably the one made by Cubic. In its last days, APTIS could
do Oyster with the right extra hardware, but most of its replacements
couldn't. Fixing an unresolved journey and undoing a journey that was
started in error are the least NR should be able to do. Alternatively
give us a smartphone app to do it!

When I put in the refund claim that started this thread I could have
done it through a browser, as long as that browser didn't use Webkit. So
you can already do it if you have a crappy smartphone. There are
probably Oystery apps that have this feature too, although the one I use
for checking my journey history doesn't have it.

--
David Cantrell | A machine for turning tea into grumpiness

Just because it is possible to do this sort of thing
in the English language doesn't mean it should be done

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 08:45:00PM +0100, Mrs. Invalid-Address wrote:

Now, when a card is rejected for any reason, there is a different bleep
and an error code is displayed ...

Bleeps that are impossible to distinguish from the constant bleeping of
the other gates nearby. Error codes that are very hard to see because
they're low contrast, low down, and may be obscured by the hand and arm
holding your card.

I'm not sure this is all the fault of Oyster ...

The user interface problems above most certainly are. You need a clear
signal that your gate, and not either of its neighbours, is saying "you
shall not pass". And even then people will still just walk into the
barriers, and then be let through by the person behind them, because
90+% of the time it works properly and so people aren't prepared to
stop, look, and only go if the gate opens.

That people seem to think that Oyster is a contactless system when in
fact you need to place the card flat on the reader for a non-negligible
time if you want to have any hope of it working reliably is, if not a
fault in the Oyster system, at least a fault in how it has been marketed
to users.

--
David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

There is no one true indentation style,
But if there were K&R would be Its Prophets.
Peace be upon Their Holy Beards.

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

"David Cantrell" wrote in message
k...
On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 02:52:00PM +0100, David Walters wrote:

The older pneumatic gates should have a display on exit like the one
in http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ter-Reader.jpg

Such high contrast! So close to the eye-line! That huge text!

It's crap, isn't it

I just can't believe anyone put any thought into the usability of this
feature at all.

It looks more like - we've got this screen her to output stuff whilst we are
testing, we might as well leave it in the final product

tim

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 28/04/2014 09:42, Hils wrote:
On 2014-04-28 08:34, Graeme Wall wrote:
On 28/04/2014 07:41, Hils wrote:

It doesn't much matter, it's only a jobclub for the aristocracy's
surplus offspring. (See also banks, BBC.)

What's it like living in 1910?

Perhaps you missed the study showing that there was more social mobility
in Britain in the 12th century than there is in the 21st.

The best things that ever happened for social mobility in England were
the Black Death and the Battle of the Somme. Shall we have a rerun of them?


--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

David Cantrell wrote:

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 01:26:55AM -0500,
wrote:

Go through a gate that opens in front of you and discover the touch
hasn't been registered, giving an unresolved journey. My wife got
two out of two from King's Cross to Westminster and back in 2011.

That's happened to me twice in the last coupla weeks now. The first
time, TfL seem to have needed me to phone them, the second they seem
to have magically worked it out anyway despite it being far less
obvious what I actually did:

Thu 24 Apr
19:06 touch in, Aldgate East, cost: GBP5.10
19:23 touch out, Victoria tube, refund: GBP2.95
19:25 touch in, Victoria NR, cost: GBP2.95
[no touch out]

so my touch out at Thornton Heath went missing. But my journey history
says:

19:06 - ???? Aldgate East to [No touch-out], cost: GBP5.10

Which is apparently the right amount.

No, as you touched in after 1900, the correct fare would be £4.10.

Peter Smyth

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 28/04/2014 19:04, Arthur Figgis wrote:
On 28/04/2014 09:42, Hils wrote:
On 2014-04-28 08:34, Graeme Wall wrote:
On 28/04/2014 07:41, Hils wrote:

It doesn't much matter, it's only a jobclub for the aristocracy's
surplus offspring. (See also banks, BBC.)

What's it like living in 1910?

Perhaps you missed the study showing that there was more social mobility
in Britain in the 12th century than there is in the 21st.

The best things that ever happened for social mobility in England were
the Black Death and the Battle of the Somme. Shall we have a rerun of them?



Black Death was 14th Century, not 12th. I don't know what study Mr Hils
is referring to.

The effect of the Somme (and WW1 casualties generally) is not quite so
clear cut. Proportionally far more officers were killed than private
soldiers[1]. What did cause major social upheaval was the employment of
thousands of women in what was considered to be male only professions.
Though that is not necessarily social mobility in the class war sense.

[1] I'm just glad my grandfather wasn't posted to his regiment in France
until 1st August. On the first day of the Somme offensive a month
earlier, every single one of the junior officers of his regiment were
killed.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.
Railway Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 13:55:20 +0100, David Cantrell
wrote:

On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 07:55:11PM +0100, Richard wrote:

[...] Alternatively give us a smartphone app to do it!

When I put in the refund claim that started this thread I could have
done it through a browser, as long as that browser didn't use Webkit. So
you can already do it if you have a crappy smartphone. There are
probably Oystery apps that have this feature too, although the one I use
for checking my journey history doesn't have it.

There are places where the app can update the card directly using NFC
-- RMV in Germany are doing this. I wonder whether this is even
possible with Oyster? I suppose it won't matter soon with bank cards
and then (maybe) "dumb" Oyster... I believe it is possible with ITSO
though so we might see it done there.

Richard.

The Cost and Funding of Transit Systems
 

On 28/04/2014 10:56, Hils wrote:
On 2014-04-28 10:45, Graeme Wall wrote:
From a summary of Piketty's work in today's Guardian: "those who have
family fortunes are the winners, and everyone else doesn't have much of
a shot of being wealthy unless they marry into or inherit money. [...]
No one else can ever catch up."

Lovely piece of selective quoting.

I'm happy for interested readers to read the sources and make their own
conclusions, but here's a snippet from Piketty himself:

“It’s very difficult to make a democratic system work when you have such
extreme inequality” in income, he said, “and such extreme inequality in
terms of political influence and the production of knowledge and
information. One of the big lessons of the 20th century is that we don’t
need 19th-century inequality to grow.” But that’s just where the
capitalist world is heading again, he concludes. [...]

He favors a progressive global tax on real wealth (minus debt), with the
proceeds not handed to inefficient governments but redistributed to
those with less capital. “We just want a way to share the tax burden
that is fair and practical,” he said." [1]

[1]
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/bu...karl-marx.html

The operative line in "Wall Street" was not "Greed is good" but "Do you
think we live in a democracy?"

--
Myth, after all, is what we believe naturally. History is what we must
painfully learn and struggle to remember. -Albert Goldman

It continues to amaze me that such problems are not more widespread.
If you are bored, desperate or just feeling in need of cheering up then stand and watch people use the barriers and Oyster.
At least 25% can't use the barrier; not holding the card on the reader long enough, trying to get it read through layers of other things, in proximity to other cards and best of all, obstructing the sensors.

Many blame the system. Mostly it's not knowing how to use a barrier.

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

In message , at 22:53:38 on Tue, 29
Apr 2014, webjunk remarked:
It continues to amaze me that such problems are not more widespread.
If you are bored, desperate or just feeling in need of cheering up then
stand and watch people use the barriers and Oyster.
At least 25% can't use the barrier; not holding the card on the reader
long enough, trying to get it read through layers of other things, in
proximity to other cards and best of all, obstructing the sensors.

Many blame the system. Mostly it's not knowing how to use a barrier.

Not that I want to join the bash-the-Norfolk-residents brigade, but
having spent several years observing seniors with smartcard-twirlies
boarding buses in another county, the failure rate was astonishing
(especially as these are very likely frequent users) when it came to
holding the card sufficiently close to the correct part of the validator
next to the bus driver.
--
Roland Perry

Oyster: still an unreliable rip-off
 

On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 06:23:02PM +0000, Peter Smyth wrote:
David Cantrell wrote:
Thu 24 Apr
19:06 touch in, Aldgate East, cost: GBP5.10
19:23 touch out, Victoria tube, refund: GBP2.95
19:25 touch in, Victoria NR, cost: GBP2.95
[no touch out]
so my touch out at Thornton Heath went missing. But my journey history
says:

19:06 - ???? Aldgate East to [No touch-out], cost: GBP5.10

Which is apparently the right amount.
No, as you touched in after 1900, the correct fare would be ?4.10.

Are you sure? If that's the case then they're being *really* naughty,
because the website says:

" You do not currently have any incomplete journeys that are eligible
for an online refund application. "

Making things even worse, they only provide a phone number as a means of
contacting them.

--
David Cantrell | Bourgeois reactionary pig

Eye have a spelling chequer / It came with my pea sea
It planely marques four my revue / Miss Steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word / And weight for it to say
Weather eye am wrong oar write / It shows me strait a weigh.