On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 01:00:11PM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 12:25:34
on Tue, 9 Sep 2014, David Cantrell remarked:
I've been using Oyster PAYG instead of a paper travelcard for the last
few months. I don't trust it, so check my journey history every morning.
I find that it has screwed up, on average, once a week. And only once
has it screwed up in my favour by completely missing a journey. Every
other time it overcharged me.
You've confirmed what a lot of people only suspected.

I thought it was widely known. It's certainly come up in Stuff at city
hall.

I was particularly impressed by the time I touched out at Victoria
(District line), the gates failed to open, but it registered the touch
out anyway and the gate refused to recognise me trying again. The gate
next door did though, and despite that gate line having been exit only
for the last twenty years, it registered a touch *in* when it let me
out. My journey history then has another touch in two minutes later at
the BR station. So it goes ...

18:33: touch in at Aldgate East
18:53: touch out at Victoria (district line)
18:54: touch in at Victoria (exit-only gateline; no subsequent touch out)
18:56: touch in at Victoria BR
19:25: touch out at Thornton Heath

You have to be a really special kind of stupid to charge me for three
trips there, but they did. You have to be a really special kind of
stupid to not flag supposed concurrent journeys on the same card for
some kind of review.

I can pretty much guarantee you that there will be *lots* of false
positives. Probably more than with plain old Oyster, because if people
are paying with their bank card they won't think it necessary to sign up
for an account in an obscure corner of the TfL website and to check it
religiously.
And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your
balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for
the fraction of a second it displays the number.

And if you know what the various numbers mean, and if you can see them
anyway, and if you remember what your balance is, and if you can hold
the Byzantine fare structure in your head and so extract meaning from
the random numbers.

In good Oystery news, they appear to have finally learned how to make a
website properly, and the journey history now doesn't require that you
use Firefox.

--
David Cantrell | Hero of the Information Age

The voices said it's a good day to clean my weapons

In message , at 11:34:18 on
Wed, 10 Sep 2014, David Walters remarked:

but the exit gate also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online
version and that is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown
on the gate.

I'm not really sure how that happened.

If the gates are online to the "back office" it could be possible to
calculate and display the fare since the last 'touch', but this isn't
the same as a running total for the day.

I think another number

What sort of number - a sum of money, error message...

was displayed in the space I would expect to see
remaining Oyster balance

Hold on - are there two places at a gate that numbers are displayed, the
one you first mentioned and also the "Oyster balance space"?

but I didn't get a proper look and was surprised
to see anything at all.

--
Roland Perry

On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 01:36:34PM +0100, Richard J. wrote:
David Cantrell wrote on 09 September 2014
I've been using Oyster PAYG instead of a paper travelcard for the last
few months. I don't trust it, so check my journey history every morning.
I find that it has screwed up, on average, once a week. And only once
has it screwed up in my favour by completely missing a journey. Every
other time it overcharged me.
Can you give some examples of how this happened? Did the system fail to
register a touch-in/out

It's mostly that - failing to register when the gates are either locked
open because there are no staff on duty, or failing to register but
opening anyway.

or has it miscalculated the fare for the time
of day that you travelled, or what?

I have no idea. Understanding the fare structure requires an advanced
degree in non-Euclidean economics. It does appear to be fairly
consistent in what it charges me provided that it correctly registers my
touches in and out though.

The one thing that ****es me off is that I will often touch in at
Thornton Heath a minute or so before the 09:30 cut-off for off-peak
fares, but the next train doesn't leave until after the cut-off.
Therefore I think I should be charged at the off-peak rate. It really
shouldn't be difficult for a billing system computer to look at a damned
timetable. However, AIUI this particular bit of over-charging is
deliberate and it's performing as advertised.

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

One person can change the world, but most of the time they shouldn't
-- Marge Simpson

On Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:27:23 +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:34:18 on
Wed, 10 Sep 2014, David Walters remarked:

but the exit gate also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online
version and that is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown
on the gate.

I'm not really sure how that happened.

If the gates are online to the "back office" it could be possible to
calculate and display the fare since the last 'touch', but this isn't
the same as a running total for the day.

I think another number

What sort of number - a sum of money, error message...

Perhaps a sum of money but I'm really not sure.

was displayed in the space I would expect to see
remaining Oyster balance

Hold on - are there two places at a gate that numbers are displayed, the
one you first mentioned and also the "Oyster balance space"?

IIRC the Oyster pad display or gate display, depending on the age of the
gate, shows something like EXIT on the first line and your balance in
brackets at the start of the second line and the fare for the journey
at the end of the second line.

http://www.freetoursbyfoot.com/wp-co...2/Barriers.jpg
shows a gate on exit. The detail isn't there to read the numbers but
there are two shown.

On Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:31:42 +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
The one thing that ****es me off is that I will often touch in at
Thornton Heath a minute or so before the 09:30 cut-off for off-peak
fares, but the next train doesn't leave until after the cut-off.
Therefore I think I should be charged at the off-peak rate.

That's not my experience. I used to catch a 0926 train from Oakleigh
Park which was frequently a few minutes late. There are validators on
the platform and as long as I touched in at 0927 or later I would pay
an off-peak fare.

That train has now been re-timed and is scheduled to depart at 0925
which it usually does IME so I've ended up paying more.

"Roland Perry" wrote

, at 12:05:19 on Wed, 10 Sep 2014, David Cantrell
remarked:
"TfL is starting to issue inspectors with portable card readers which
will be able to read the card???s recent journey history."

Which contradicts what I thought I'd read about contactless card
technology and the ability to store recent transactions on the card

That could be a poor description of a device that reads the card's
number from the card and checks that it has been used to pay for a
fare on that bus.

That makes it sound like the device can read the paper printout too, so it
has something to compare the cards with


I assume that instead of or as well as the paper printout a digital copy can
be be sent to an inspector's portable device.


-- --
Mike D

In message , at 17:29:51 on Wed, 10
Sep 2014, Michael R N Dolbear remarked:
"TfL is starting to issue inspectors with portable card readers which
will be able to read the card???s recent journey history."

Which contradicts what I thought I'd read about contactless card
technology and the ability to store recent transactions on the card

That could be a poor description of a device that reads the card's
number from the card and checks that it has been used to pay for a
fare on that bus.

That makes it sound like the device can read the paper printout too,
so it has something to compare the cards with

I assume that instead of or as well as the paper printout a digital
copy can be be sent to an inspector's portable device.

That sounds like a bigger modification to the bus terminals than just
printing out a slip.
--
Roland Perry

"Roland Perry" wrote

In message , at 17:29:51 on Wed, 10
Sep 2014, Michael R N Dolbear remarked:

"TfL is starting to issue inspectors with portable card readers which
will be able to read the card???s recent journey history."
[...]
I assume that instead of or as well as the paper printout a digital
copy can be be sent to an inspector's portable device.

That sounds like a bigger modification to the bus terminals than just
printing out a slip.


Both the routine to print (as the 'Oyster negative' reminder) and the
routine to write to an external 'drive' (at end of day) must already be
present so the work would be just to organise and send in both cases.

Printing more than one page/ticket could be a bigger enhancement if not
already allowed for.


--
Mike D

On 10/09/2014 10:12, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Tue, 9 Sep 2014 23:44:13 +0100, David Walters
wrote:

On Tue, 9 Sep 2014 13:00:11 +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your
balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for
the fraction of a second it displays the number. I'm quite sure there's
no such facility for the contactless cards.

I'm a member of the contactless pilot and on my journey home this
evening both gates gave me red lights while opening but the exit gate
also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online version and that
is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown on the gate.

I'm not really sure how that happened. I'll have to look more closely
at the displays next time and perhaps try and get a picture.

Hmmm interesting. I wonder if TfL have responded to the trial
feedback about people not liking the absence of the fare to the paid
being shown on the exit gate display.

It suggests (I'll put it no more strongly than that) that something is
written to the bank card. I cannot see how else an exit gate could
calculate and display a fare within the few hundred millisecond
processing time parameter. I can't see there being contact with the
"back room" system in that time parameter.


Paul,

the current generation of CPC (aka EMV) cards can't be written to by the
'transit application' in the gate or validator, but they are updated by
the reader. They contain a transaction counter and a cumulative sum
recording the contactless transactions. If either of these reach a set
threhold then the card will require a Chip'n'PIN transaction so that it
can go online and ge tthe counters reset. This is a design feature to
minimise some of the risks if the card is lost or stolen.

If all you do is buy a coffee at Starbucks (or whatever), then the
occasional Chip'n'PIN operation won't be a problem. IN the transit world
I'm not 100% sure whether the card can go on for ever, or whether you
will need to buy a coffee every so often.

Future generations of EMV cards will have 'transit sectors' so that they
can carry tranit-related data.

With ITSO cards there is a lot of capability - depending on the
technical product (IPE in ITSO speak) - to store data on the card. A
Stroed Travel Rights IPE (TYP 2) is very like an Oyster APYG, and can
maintain a number of counters and accumlators on the card. Other IPE
TYPs are used for singles/returns and season/period products. But there
does seem to be a move at present to use the card - whether EMV or ITSO
- as just an ;entitlement to travel' token, with the cost of travel
being worked out in a commercial back office after the travel has taken
place.

I could go on and on about this, so if you have any more specific
questions I'd be happy to take them via private email.

Time to get off my hobby horse...

Kevin

In message , at 20:32:42 on Wed, 10 Sep
2014, Kevin Ayton remarked:
the current generation of CPC (aka EMV) cards can't be written to by
the 'transit application' in the gate or validator, but they are
updated by the reader. They contain a transaction counter and a
cumulative sum recording the contactless transactions.

But neither of these have any details about the individual transactions.

If either of these reach a set threhold then the card will require a
Chip'n'PIN transaction so that it can go online and ge tthe counters
reset. This is a design feature to minimise some of the risks if the
card is lost or stolen.

If all you do is buy a coffee at Starbucks (or whatever), then the
occasional Chip'n'PIN operation won't be a problem. IN the transit
world I'm not 100% sure whether the card can go on for ever, or whether
you will need to buy a coffee every so often.

My understanding is that transit operators such as TfL have managed to
negotiate an exemption (possibly at their own risk, but let's face it a
blagged journey on a tube train costs them nothing, a blagged Starbucks
coffee costs the franchisee real money).

I don't know exactly how this exemption has been implemented, but I
wouldn't be surprised if all TfL readers were excluded from the
requirement to increment either of the two counters mentioned.

Clearly, there's no possibility of anyone typing in a PIN.

If a card is reported (or maybe even suspected by usage patterns) to
have been stolen, then TfL will block it from being used any more by
having hot-lists at the gates. We know they do this because of the way
they describe what happens if you travel on a CPC card whose previous
day's journeys have run up a "bad debt" because the most recent
overnight funds transfer was refused by the bank.
--
Roland Perry