In message , at 15:22:11 on
Mon, 11 Aug 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:
Given each TOC will have their own HOPS and it will need to talk to
Tfl's systems and there will need to be data exchange, sharing,
revenue settlement etc I can see why there may be complications.

Again, I don't know what's so different about revenue settlement at the
point of use of a Travelcard (rather than when it's sold). When it's
being used all that needs to be done is validate that it's "in Zone".

Funny I always thought the Travelcard apportionment was done on a trip
basis by mode but I might be wrong.

Not a "trips done by that cardholder", though? There are too many places
with no gates, or locked out, for it to be able to count on that basis.

Again I doubt smartcard data is accepted as a primary data source
rather than the long established survey process. I do expect the
parties look at Oyster data as an additional source.

Long term apportionments based on surveys and other data sources is what
I'd expect. So the gates don't need to be precisely logging the
individual ITSO travelcards going through, just making sure they are
valid.

Or are you saying that unbeknown to the passengers they are counting how
much the Travelcard is actually (rather than potentially) used on which
routes, and divvying up the revenue retrospectively?

Of course they are counting journey data. If it wasn't important why
do Southern insist that the Key card is touched in and out even when
you have a single ticket on the card?

Like Oyster (who similarly insist even for Travelcard holders) to get
people into the habit, and so the people whose cards *do* need to be
touched in and out for validation purposes don't observe lots of other
people not touching them in and out.

Also, for singles, even if it's just a validator rather than a gate, the
touching in/out process will allow long term statistics to be gathered
about actual journeys made, rather than what's been bought (including
people making longer rather than shorter trips).

Quite whether they are cross checking against Travelcards I don't
know. I would expect TOCs to look at the data to see how many trips
are made with season tickets and how many are normal commutes and how
many are leisure journeys. That's just an interesting bit of data any
rail company would want to know if it can be reasonably certain about
the data quality.

Again, that data is useful and by all means gather it. But there are too
many "holes" for it to be used to apportion the cost of supplying travel
to individual travelcard holders.

I expect I'm more likely to be using a TSGN ITSO card (for my travel to
London); it'll be interesting to see if those interoperate well with
ITSO gates at places like Cambridge which are operated by GA.

Well that's for Govia and AGA to sort out. There is no central
"guiding hand" which is why you get the nonsense of some mag tickets
with special validities not being recognised.

I'd expect the DfT would 'guide' them all, in order for SEFT to be a
success rather than a balkanised mess.

I'm not holding my breath to be able to add a GA (or any other
'foreign') ITSO ticket onto my TSGN card[1], or onto a local Stagecoach
bus ITSO card.

I think the bus stuff might be a step too far *unless* there is a lot
of customer pressure to force Stagecoach and Govia to work together.
There is actually a fair bit of overlap along the line of the TSGN
franchise so never say never.

I'm not suggesting inter-availability of ticketing (well, not yet,
although given you can buy a GA rail ticket with Stagecoach Plusbus,
that should be some sort of long term goal).

No, what I'm looking for is a reduction in card-bloat, so that I can
load my bus tickets, and different TOC tickets, separately onto one
card. The barriers can work out which single-mode ticket is the one they
are looking for when I touch in/out.

If that doesn't happen, I'm still not sure onto whose smartcard I'd
expect to load a ticket for an EMT train, on a route whose pricing was
set by XC, bought from the EC website and collected at a GA station.
[Ely-Peterborough on a Norwich-Liverpool train].

Quite likely the first casualty would be my ability to pick and choose
the booking site. Ultimately it may turn out (short term hopefully) that
only trips between same-TOC stations on tickets bought through that TOC
would work (loaded onto that TOC's card - but see below for acceptance
on-train when travelling on a different TOC).

Unfortunately, for my Ely-Peterborough trip one station is GA, the other
EC, neither is XC or EMT, EC doesn't serve the route and GA only serves
it 0.5tph.

I expect South East Flexible Ticketing will have to sort out inter
operator acceptance for valid rail tickets. To not do so would be
lunacy.

On the trains, of course. When I travel back from Cambridge to Ely it's
literally the luck of the draw whether I catch XC, GA or FCC; each of
them being 1tph (although not equally spread through the hour).

[1] Whatever branding it gets, currently it's Southern "the Key" of
course. Have they decided to brand themselves GTR long term, or is that
just a working title?

All Go Ahead businesses use the "Key" brand name for their transport
smartcard so I can't see TSGN being any different. They refer to the
Key in their documents related to the franchise changes.

I don't doubt they'll keep "the Key", but will there be an ongoing
"Southern the Key" and new "Thameslink the Key" and "Great Northern the
Key" cards, or will they rename the Southern product as "GTR[1] the Key"
and have it valid over all their routes?

[1] Or some other as yet unannounced branding like "Govia Capital
Connect" [only joking about the actual words there, but things like this
do matter, as FCC found out when the PIS at Kings Cross cropped them to
"First Capital Con"].
--
Roland Perry