On Saturday, 15 November 2014 14:49:24 UTC, wrote:
In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 18:20:00 -0600,
wrote:

In article ,
(Kevin Ayton) wrote:

Paul, you are right - it is a very opdd explanation.
It seems to have conflated two issues. Yes, there are some
constraints within ITSO which can prevent certain letters being used
in certain circumstances to record a route number in a trasnaction
record. But that can be circumvented, and in any case the transaction
record doesn't have to show the same route number that the public
sees.

More likely the ITSO on Prestige rollout hasn't hit all the buses
yet. The buses need both the ITSO 'shell and product keys' so they
can read the ENCTS cards and the concession products on them., and
they also need the 'commercial rules' to know that they can accept
these cards. My guess would be that one or the other hasn't bee
completed yet.

Just my £0.02 contribution

Don't they all have to handle ITSO cards now to allow Southern's "The
Key" card to be handled correctly and charges deducted?

You are right that Southern's Key does have to be handled by buses in
terms of processing a Travelcard held on the card. I am not sure that
any charges can be deducted because PAYG does not work on ITSO cards
in the same way as for Oyster. That does raise a little question in my
head as to what happens if someone has an Out Boundary Z26 travelcard
on a Key Card and travels by train into Zone 1. Do they get penalty
fared?

AIUI ITSO relies on "product definitions" being recognised by readers.
If the definitions of English concessionary permits haven't been
loaded then cards can't be processed. I do think the readers
recognise the presence of an ENCTS ITSO card though. I'm sure I've
seen people present them on TfL buses and the error beeps sound. I
assume the definitions for Travelcards and national rail tickets into
the zonal area have been loaded on the TfL readers for Key and C2C
Smart users.

Aha! The Southern product is more limited than I understood. We are looking
forward to their developments in Cambridge now of course. Indeed if you try
to buy a ticket from the GTR web sites they all go to the Southern site. We
are promised "The Key" real soon now.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Southern's version of PAYG is called Keygo. It requires a card auto-topup to be set, and the fares charged are calculated in the back office. It's only available at the moment in the Crawley and Brighton areas on rail, Metrobus and Brighton Buses.

In article ,
(Matthew Dickinson) wrote:

On Saturday, 15 November 2014 14:49:24 UTC,
wrote:
In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 18:20:00 -0600,
wrote:

In article ,
(Kevin Ayton) wrote:

Paul, you are right - it is a very opdd explanation.
It seems to have conflated two issues. Yes, there are some
constraints within ITSO which can prevent certain letters being
used in certain circumstances to record a route number in a
trasnaction record. But that can be circumvented, and in any case
the transaction record doesn't have to show the same route number
that the public sees.

More likely the ITSO on Prestige rollout hasn't hit all the buses
yet. The buses need both the ITSO 'shell and product keys' so they
can read the ENCTS cards and the concession products on them., and
they also need the 'commercial rules' to know that they can accept
these cards. My guess would be that one or the other hasn't bee
completed yet.

Just my £0.02 contribution

Don't they all have to handle ITSO cards now to allow Southern's
"The Key" card to be handled correctly and charges deducted?

You are right that Southern's Key does have to be handled by buses in
terms of processing a Travelcard held on the card. I am not sure that
any charges can be deducted because PAYG does not work on ITSO cards
in the same way as for Oyster. That does raise a little question in my
head as to what happens if someone has an Out Boundary Z26 travelcard
on a Key Card and travels by train into Zone 1. Do they get penalty
fared?

AIUI ITSO relies on "product definitions" being recognised by readers.
If the definitions of English concessionary permits haven't been
loaded then cards can't be processed. I do think the readers
recognise the presence of an ENCTS ITSO card though. I'm sure I've
seen people present them on TfL buses and the error beeps sound. I
assume the definitions for Travelcards and national rail tickets into
the zonal area have been loaded on the TfL readers for Key and C2C
Smart users.

Aha! The Southern product is more limited than I understood. We are
looking forward to their developments in Cambridge now of course.
Indeed if you try to buy a ticket from the GTR web sites they all
go to the Southern site. We are promised "The Key" real soon now.

Southern's version of PAYG is called Keygo. It requires a card
auto-topup to be set, and the fares charged are calculated in the
back office. It's only available at the moment in the Crawley and
Brighton areas on rail, Metrobus and Brighton Buses.

I was more thinking of automatic pickup at gates of tickets bought online.
That's the desperate need at Cambridge where ticket vending capacity is
stretched beyond breaking point at the strangest of times.

Queues out of the door between 9 and 10 on Saturday mornings I knew about
but 4 on a Friday afternoon (according to a Tweet by Mary Beard) was a new
one yesterday.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , at 18:20:00
on Fri, 14 Nov 2014, remarked:
More likely the ITSO on Prestige rollout hasn't hit all the buses
yet. The buses need both the ITSO 'shell and product keys' so they
can read the ENCTS cards and the concession products on them., and
they also need the 'commercial rules' to know that they can accept
these cards. My guess would be that one or the other hasn't bee
completed yet.

Just my £0.02 contribution

Don't they all have to handle ITSO cards now to allow Southern's "The Key"

And C2C now.

card to be handled correctly and charges deducted?

They only support pre-purchased Travelcards, not PAYG.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 08:49:22
on Sat, 15 Nov 2014, remarked:

We are looking forward to their developments in Cambridge now of
course. Indeed if you try to buy a ticket from the GTR web sites they
all go to the Southern site. We are promised "The Key" real soon now.

I wonder if we'll need to get a new The Key for Great Northern. I
already have a Southern The Key and an Oxford Bus The Key, but I haven't
yet had a chance to see if they are interoperable. Last time I tried not
even the Southern The Key was usable at Victoria, although now it
clearly must be.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 10:42:56
on Sat, 15 Nov 2014, remarked:
I was more thinking of automatic pickup at gates of tickets bought online.
That's the desperate need at Cambridge where ticket vending capacity is
stretched beyond breaking point at the strangest of times.

Queues out of the door between 9 and 10 on Saturday mornings I knew about
but 4 on a Friday afternoon (according to a Tweet by Mary Beard) was a new
one yesterday.

I've joined in the tweets. Perhaps they should relocate a dispensing
facility to the toilets, like in Ely.

Friday afternoon is presumably non-season-ticket holders - weekly
commuters, or people going to London for the weekend.
--
Roland Perry

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 08:49:22
on Sat, 15 Nov 2014, remarked:

We are looking forward to their developments in Cambridge now of
course. Indeed if you try to buy a ticket from the GTR web sites they
all go to the Southern site. We are promised "The Key" real soon now.

I wonder if we'll need to get a new The Key for Great Northern. I already
have a Southern The Key and an Oxford Bus The Key, but I haven't yet had
a chance to see if they are interoperable. Last time I tried not even the
Southern The Key was usable at Victoria, although now it clearly must be.

I currently possess a Southern "The Key", but alas am yet to use it. The
main place I would kill for it to work is Gatwick Airport - just being able
to pick up tickets at the gate avoiding the /dreadful/ queues at Gatwick
would be fantastic (i.e. PAYG is not the requirement for me personally.)
It seems to be a race though as to which will get to Gatwick first - The
Key or Oyster...


Gatwick is a great airport these days, utterly transformed by MAG following
the years of BAA's disdain, but the railway station really lets it down.

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at
10:42:56 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014, remarked:
I was more thinking of automatic pickup at gates of tickets bought
online. That's the desperate need at Cambridge where ticket vending
capacity is stretched beyond breaking point at the strangest of times.

Queues out of the door between 9 and 10 on Saturday mornings I knew about
but 4 on a Friday afternoon (according to a Tweet by Mary Beard) was a
new one yesterday.

I've joined in the tweets. Perhaps they should relocate a dispensing
facility to the toilets, like in Ely.

Yes, Roland, I joined you in!

Friday afternoon is presumably non-season-ticket holders - weekly
commuters, or people going to London for the weekend.

Well, the immense queues won't involve commuters with seasons, to be sure.
Like I said, Friday afternoon was a new one to me.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at
08:49:22 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014, remarked:

We are looking forward to their developments in Cambridge now of
course. Indeed if you try to buy a ticket from the GTR web sites they
all go to the Southern site. We are promised "The Key" real soon now.

I wonder if we'll need to get a new The Key for Great Northern. I
already have a Southern The Key and an Oxford Bus The Key, but I
haven't yet had a chance to see if they are interoperable. Last time
I tried not even the Southern The Key was usable at Victoria,
although now it clearly must be.

If they aren't interchangeable calling them "The" anything won't be too
clever.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , at 13:32:23
on Sat, 15 Nov 2014, remarked:
Well, the immense queues won't involve commuters with seasons, to be sure.
Like I said, Friday afternoon was a new one to me.

Friday afternoon was always the worst at Nottingham. There it was very
obviously students going home or away for the weekend. Even after they
installed ticket machines the queues would block most of the rather big
concourse, and people failing to get to a machine to pick up TOD in time
was a regular occurrence.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 23:52:00 on
Sat, 15 Nov 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:
I currently possess a Southern "The Key", but alas am yet to use it. The
main place I would kill for it to work is Gatwick Airport - just being able
to pick up tickets at the gate avoiding the /dreadful/ queues at Gatwick
would be fantastic (i.e. PAYG is not the requirement for me personally.)
It seems to be a race though as to which will get to Gatwick first - The
Key or Oyster...

Surely the Southern Key *does* work at Gatwick?

That's what I'd have thought.

http://www.southernrailway.com/ticke...fares/the-key/

https://www.southernrailway.com/smar...s/routemap.pdf

The one current weakness is that you cannot collect an online ordered
ticket via a gate or validator inside the zonal area. It only works
from Southern stations to the London area or other Southern stations.
Still that would allow you to collect a pre-ordered ticket *at*
Gatwick as you go through the gateline for travel back to Victoria.

The "collect in London" facility is promised for "later this year"
which I assume refers to 2014 but we'll see.

The history of ITSO is peppered with announcements about things
happening "later this year", which were still awaited 18 months later.
--
Roland Perry