Robin May wrote:

Ian Tindale wrote the following in:


*and that's another thing - why was I penalised £3 just to carry
around this useless card for a while?

I don't know for sure, but I suspect it's because pyster will let you
through the gates with no money and leave you with a negative balance
at the other end. If there was no deposit for getting a card, people
could get an Oyster, go through the gates, chuck it away with the
negative balance and then get another Oyster for getting back home.

That's interesting. How many times are you allowed to rack up successive
negative balance on the one card?

--
Ian Tindale

Ian Tindale wrote the following in:


Robin May wrote:

Ian Tindale wrote the following in:


*and that's another thing - why was I penalised £3 just to
carry around this useless card for a while?

I don't know for sure, but I suspect it's because pyster will let
you through the gates with no money and leave you with a negative
balance at the other end. If there was no deposit for getting a
card, people could get an Oyster, go through the gates, chuck it
away with the negative balance and then get another Oyster for
getting back home.

That's interesting. How many times are you allowed to rack up
successive negative balance on the one card?

As far as I'm aware, only once. If you have negative balance you can't
go through the gates again until it's sorted out.

--
message by Robin May-Silk and my close friend, Robert Kilroy-Kotton
"GIVE IN! IT'S TIME TO GO!" - The NHS offers a high standard of care.

http://robinmay.fotopic.net
Spelling lesson: then and than are different words.

"Ben Nunn" wrote in message ...

Capping needs to be introduced, and it needs to be smart and effective. The
£90/50 Prepay limit needs to be abolished and the 'nominate a specific
station to pick up your credit' thing must go. Also, a Non-prepay
Pay-as-you-go that bills your credit/debit card would also be far better
than having to add value to the card periodically.

Performing all the calculations required to get the 'instant' capping
to work (based on your last few journies) in the time you have your
card over the reader then to write back the refund to the card while
it is still in range is a non-trivial exercise - and is limited by the
length of the journey record kept on the card. This record needs to
hold every journey over the capping period for the calculation to be
correct.

For example if only the last 10 journeys are held and the period is 24
hours then a two zone tube journey could be made on peak (£2 prepay),
followed by 10 bus journeys (that would be capped at £2.50 for a one
day bus pass), followed by another £2 tube journey. The bus journeys
would have 'pushed off' the first tube journey resulting in a £6.50
total for the day rather than a £5.30 day travelcard because the first
journey can no longer be 'seen' by the program in the gate responsible
for the capping. While I admit this is a very contrived example it
illustrates the problem well - especially if the capping period is
scaled up substantially (to say, 1 week) without increasing the
journey storage capacity on the cards. And once you increase the
amount stored on the card it takes longer to read and write back -
causing lots of '96 Seek Assistance' errors as people pull the cards
away too fast without waiting for the green light. These are not easy
(or cheep) problems to solve - which probably explains the length of
time it is taking to come up with a 100% working solution - if one is
ever found.

From a technical point of view it would be far easier to introduce
'credit card' style billing (which I think was announced a while back)
whereby the price calculations are made based on a whole months travel
then you get sent the bill to pay at the end of the month. In this
case the backend system does not have a limited time frame to make the
calculations (in comparison to instant capping) and also has access to
all travel events for the past month to base them on. This requires a
completely new infrastructure to be installed that prints out the
bills and collects the payments, but in reality not much different
from the kind of tried and tested billing infrastructure that any
telco has had in place for years - just with a slightly more complex
pricing plan

--
Gareth Davis

Gareth Davis wrote:


For example if only the last 10 journeys are held and the period is 24
hours then a two zone tube journey could be made on peak (£2 prepay),
followed by 10 bus journeys (that would be capped at £2.50 for a one
day bus pass), followed by another £2 tube journey. The bus journeys
would have 'pushed off' the first tube journey resulting in a £6.50
total for the day rather than a £5.30 day travelcard because the first
journey can no longer be 'seen' by the program in the gate responsible
for the capping. While I admit this is a very contrived example it
illustrates the problem well - especially if the capping period is
scaled up substantially (to say, 1 week) without increasing the
journey storage capacity on the cards. And once you increase the
amount stored on the card it takes longer to read and write back -
causing lots of '96 Seek Assistance' errors as people pull the cards
away too fast without waiting for the green light. These are not easy
(or cheep) problems to solve - which probably explains the length of
time it is taking to come up with a 100% working solution - if one is
ever found.

But how do the weekly season tickets work? Are they some sort of blanket
'I've paid' signal that last a whole week? I'd have thought the same sort
of system would work for an off-peak one day travelcard* that simply says
'I've paid, let me through' and the oyster reader says 'is it after 9:30?
yep, okay'. Capping sounds complicated, whereas a straightforward off-peak
one day travelcard itself that works in the same way as a weekly (ie, don't
need to plonk on the reader on the way in or out of the station, but
nevertheless registers as valid when the driver comes up and inspects your
ticket) sounds quite simple in concept.

* Certainly not a peak - what's the point in such a minority-use ticket -
costs too much - never ever used one, never heard of anyone else paying for
one either.
--
Ian Tindale

In message , Ian Tindale
writes
* Certainly not a peak - what's the point in such a minority-use ticket -
costs too much - never ever used one, never heard of anyone else paying for
one either.

I bought a peak travelcard yesterday, or should I say "was sold one" as
it was apparently cheaper than buying a Z1 return (for use at 9am).

In years gone by, the introduction of a Peak Travelcard by WAGN has
avoided the early morning non-season-ticket traveller from having to buy
a Single to London plus a Network Card single back again (this being
much cheaper than buying a peak return).
--
Roland Perry

"Gareth Davis" wrote in message
om...
"Ben Nunn" wrote in message
...

Capping needs to be introduced, and it needs to be smart and effective.
The
£90/50 Prepay limit needs to be abolished and the 'nominate a specific
station to pick up your credit' thing must go. Also, a Non-prepay
Pay-as-you-go that bills your credit/debit card would also be far better
than having to add value to the card periodically.

Performing all the calculations required to get the 'instant' capping
to work (based on your last few journies) in the time you have your
card over the reader then to write back the refund to the card while
it is still in range is a non-trivial exercise - and is limited by the
length of the journey record kept on the card. This record needs to
hold every journey over the capping period for the calculation to be
correct.


This seems like poor design to me - surely all the card needs to contain is
a unique ID, and all the other information could be contained within a
centralised database?

BTN

On 15 Jun 2004 16:10:43 -0700, (Gareth
Davis) wrote:


Performing all the calculations required to get the 'instant' capping
to work (based on your last few journies) in the time you have your
card over the reader then to write back the refund to the card while
it is still in range is a non-trivial exercise

and this wasn't known when the system was designed, why, exactly?

On 15 Jun 2004 21:21:06 GMT, Robin May
wrote:

As far as I'm aware, only once. If you have negative balance you can't
go through the gates again until it's sorted out.

Does it stop you using the travelcard bit of the ticket or just the
pre-pay bit?

k wrote the following in:


On 15 Jun 2004 21:21:06 GMT, Robin May
wrote:

As far as I'm aware, only once. If you have negative balance you
can't go through the gates again until it's sorted out.

Does it stop you using the travelcard bit of the ticket or just
the pre-pay bit?

It won't let you through the gates, so it stops you using any bit of
the card.

--
message by Robin May-Silk and my close friend, Robert Kilroy-Kotton
"GIVE IN! IT'S TIME TO GO!" - The NHS offers a high standard of care.

http://robinmay.fotopic.net
Spelling lesson: then and than are different words.

On 15 Jun 2004 16:10:43 -0700, (Gareth
Davis) wrote:

"Ben Nunn" wrote in message ...

Capping needs to be introduced, and it needs to be smart and effective. The
£90/50 Prepay limit needs to be abolished and the 'nominate a specific
station to pick up your credit' thing must go. Also, a Non-prepay
Pay-as-you-go that bills your credit/debit card would also be far better
than having to add value to the card periodically.


For example if only the last 10 journeys are held and the period is 24
hours then a two zone tube journey could be made on peak (£2 prepay),
followed by 10 bus journeys (that would be capped at £2.50 for a one
day bus pass), followed by another £2 tube journey. The bus journeys
would have 'pushed off' the first tube journey resulting in a £6.50
total for the day rather than a £5.30 day travelcard because the first
journey can no longer be 'seen' by the program in the gate responsible
for the capping. While I admit this is a very contrived example it
illustrates the problem well - especially if the capping period is
scaled up substantially (to say, 1 week) without increasing the
journey storage capacity on the cards. And once you increase the
amount stored on the card it takes longer to read and write back -
causing lots of '96 Seek Assistance' errors as people pull the cards
away too fast without waiting for the green light. These are not easy
(or cheep) problems to solve - which probably explains the length of
time it is taking to come up with a 100% working solution - if one is
ever found.


Why not do a rebate system? Take all the single fares. Let a central
computer workout each night what rebates are do and then automatically
apply them at the next top up (or on demand).

PRAR
--
http://www.i.am/prar/
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