In article . 170,
Adrian wrote:
Why not? Ticket inspectors already have hand-held Oyster wands.

That may not be sufficent for the more complex problems[1]. Y'know,
the ones the machines can't cope with, and that a person at a ticket
office needs to resolve.

The ones a person needs to resolve? Yeh, I'd reckon that could be arranged.
All you'd need to do is have a person holding the wand, and have a wand
with sufficient software. Shouldn't be difficult. Build a cheap PDA into
it.

And how is the PDA + wand etc going to talk to the oyster system
in real time? Not the card; the databases and stuff in the bowels
of 55 Broadway. Oh, and you're underground, so wireless will be
problematic.

Perhaps a bit of cable? In which case, you're pretty fixed. You
might as well give the chap(ess) carrying the device a comfy chair
next to the socket. And put them in a box so that they the risk
to them (and the money!) is reduced.

We could call these things a ticket office.

--
RIP Morph (1977-2005)

Mike Bristow ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they
were saying :

Why not? Ticket inspectors already have hand-held Oyster wands.

That may not be sufficent for the more complex problems[1]. Y'know,
the ones the machines can't cope with, and that a person at a ticket
office needs to resolve.

The ones a person needs to resolve? Yeh, I'd reckon that could be
arranged. All you'd need to do is have a person holding the wand, and
have a wand with sufficient software. Shouldn't be difficult. Build a
cheap PDA into it.

And how is the PDA + wand etc going to talk to the oyster system
in real time? Not the card; the databases and stuff in the bowels
of 55 Broadway.

Genuine question - Why would that be needed?

Oh, and you're underground, so wireless will be problematic.

Radio...? Most people wandering around on the underground seem to manage to
have comms.

Perhaps a bit of cable? In which case, you're pretty fixed. You
might as well give the chap(ess) carrying the device a comfy chair
next to the socket. And put them in a box so that they the risk
to them (and the money!) is reduced.

We could call these things a ticket office.

grin

Mike Bristow wrote:

In article . 170,
Adrian wrote:
Why not? Ticket inspectors already have hand-held Oyster wands.

That may not be sufficent for the more complex problems[1]. Y'know,
the ones the machines can't cope with, and that a person at a ticket
office needs to resolve.

The ones a person needs to resolve? Yeh, I'd reckon that could be arranged.
All you'd need to do is have a person holding the wand, and have a wand
with sufficient software. Shouldn't be difficult. Build a cheap PDA into
it.

And how is the PDA + wand etc going to talk to the oyster system
in real time? Not the card; the databases and stuff in the bowels
of 55 Broadway. Oh, and you're underground, so wireless will be
problematic.

I can't think of a real time use or need for the database. Tickets,
etc. are all stored on the card (hence working on buses). So all the
magic device needs to do is write to the card and then report back
later on that day... If someone loses their oystercard the details
will still get to the magic database

In article . 170,
Adrian wrote:
And how is the PDA + wand etc going to talk to the oyster system
in real time? Not the card; the databases and stuff in the bowels
of 55 Broadway.

Genuine question - Why would that be needed?

For many simple transactions, it isn't. I would bet that the more
complex customer-service issues would require it.

This will certainly include things like "I made a journey 2 weeks
ago and got charged the incorrect fare". Possibly even if the
journey was yesterday, or this morning, too. Or "I'd like an oyster
card please". (Ok, the mobile chap(ess) can cary the forms + blank
cards, but they can't carry many, and they won't be able to cary
'ordinary' oyster cards AND photocards AND child oysters AND customer
charter forms AND ... And it'll take them six times longer to tap
out your name and address on a PDA for later uploading than they
would take to type it on the PC, even if we exclude fun tricks like
postcode lookups).

Good comms may also be required for credit card transactions for
monthly season-ticket amounts of money. Even if not required,
there is a lower risk (read: lower cost to LuL) if they do online
checking of the card number against the merchant bad-card-number-list...
I wouldn't be suprised if the modern gripper's ticket machines do
this via a GPRS connection when they can.

Not that I'm saying that totally mobile ticket-agents aren't a good
thing; but I suspect it would be better for them to be in a ticket
office where they will be able to do more.... It's not as if there's
a shortage of counters for them to sit at - there's a shortage of
people to sit in them!

Oh, and you're underground, so wireless will be problematic.

Radio...?

It's that or IR... and I don't recomend IR ;-)

Most people wandering around on the underground seem to manage to
have comms.

Analogue voice comms has a low-bandwith requirment, and is tolerant
of noise. Data often isn't. The wavelan at home has issues with
the base station in the lounge and the laptop in the kitchen... and
that's a tiny distance compared to even simple stations.

Of course, it is a solvable problem, but it's not trivial. Read
expensive.

(as an aside, I seem to recall from somewhere that the ATM machines
that corner shops have often to their transaction processing over
GPRS or GSM. Means that deployment is "plug in a 13 amp socket",
which is nice. Certainly if you design your protocols correctly,
both the opex for this kind of thing is low (the number of bits
shipped is low), and the capex is low (it's a standard part you buy for
tuppance from the chip manufacturer)).

All this aside: I don't work in the rail industry, so my guessess
may be very wrong. However, I do know enough that even aparently
simple things like this often end up being more complex and expensive
than you expect.

--
RIP Morph (1977-2005)

Mike Bristow wrote:

In article . 170,
Adrian wrote:
And how is the PDA + wand etc going to talk to the oyster system
in real time? Not the card; the databases and stuff in the bowels
of 55 Broadway.

Genuine question - Why would that be needed?

For many simple transactions, it isn't. I would bet that the more
complex customer-service issues would require it.

This will certainly include things like "I made a journey 2 weeks
ago and got charged the incorrect fare". Possibly even if the
journey was yesterday, or this morning, too.

Ticket offices will not deal with that now, so there would be no need
for a mobile person to. If someone has been incorrectly charged they
have to pay to call the oystercard helpline and then get a cheque
through the post

Or "I'd like an oyster
card please". (Ok, the mobile chap(ess) can cary the forms + blank
cards, but they can't carry many, and they won't be able to cary
'ordinary' oyster cards AND photocards AND child oysters AND customer
charter forms AND ... And it'll take them six times longer to tap
out your name and address on a PDA for later uploading than they
would take to type it on the PC, even if we exclude fun tricks like
postcode lookups).

Do they type the information in themselves in the ticket office anyway?
I had a phone call about a week after getting my first oystercard
querying an answer they were reading off the form.



Good comms may also be required for credit card transactions for
monthly season-ticket amounts of money. Even if not required,
there is a lower risk (read: lower cost to LuL) if they do online
checking of the card number against the merchant bad-card-number-list...
I wouldn't be suprised if the modern gripper's ticket machines do
this via a GPRS connection when they can.

One assumes the person would be based in the former ticket office (ie
before the barriers) on underground tube stations - easily within the
range of a simple wireless chip and pin network like that used in many
pubs and resteraunts. In an overground station w/o barriers they would
be above ground anyway. But if someone pays by card and the payment is
later rejected the tube people could stop the oystercard


Not that I'm saying that totally mobile ticket-agents aren't a good
thing; but I suspect it would be better for them to be in a ticket
office where they will be able to do more.... It's not as if there's
a shortage of counters for them to sit at - there's a shortage of
people to sit in them!


But the original point was to reduce the numbers in the offices, not to
close all offices

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, Mike Bristow wrote:

In article . 170,
Adrian wrote:

Oh, and you're underground, so wireless will be problematic.

Most people wandering around on the underground seem to manage to have
comms.

Analogue voice comms has a low-bandwith requirment, and is tolerant
of noise. Data often isn't.

Voice comms has a low bandwidth requirement? Since when? I think even
compressed, radio-quality audio needs something like 8 kb/s - not a
massive quantity, but still plenty for the kind of data ticketing needs to
move. The noise is also a red herring - yes, data is extremely sensitive
to noise, which is why electronic engineers have decades of experience of
moving bits over noisy channels without errors. If there's enough
bandwidth for analogue voice traffic, then there's enough bandwidth for
reliable data traffic at a similar rate - it's just a question of getting
the protocols right.

The wavelan at home has issues with the base station in the lounge and
the laptop in the kitchen... and that's a tiny distance compared to even
simple stations.

And working at much higher data rates, and on a different, and highly
interference-prone, frequency. Ever used a modern (ie DECT) cordless
phone? Those are digital, working at 32 kb/s, and they work rather well in
my experience. The DECT protocol stack even has provision for data
transmissions.

Of course, it is a solvable problem, but it's not trivial. Read
expensive.

Actually, i'd call it a solved problem, and therefore trivial and pretty
cheap!

All this aside: I don't work in the rail industry, so my guessess may
be very wrong. However, I do know enough that even aparently simple
things like this often end up being more complex and expensive than you
expect.

That, of course, is true.

tom

--
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray,
Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of
confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage

"Dave Hillam" ] wrote in message
.. .
d wrote in uk.transport.london on Wed, 11 Jan 2006 11:12:10 GMT
. uk:

I'm not trying to be confrontational here, but I've not heard a single
argument from ANYONE as to how the strikes have anything to do with
safety.
The safety argument begins and ends at the word "safety" - perhaps you
could
tell us how having less staff in ticket offices makes us more unsafe?

I'd understood that the references to safety were regarding the use of
either untrained staff (or, alternatively, no staff at all) as part of
LUL management's efforts to keep stations open during the strikes.
BICBW.

--
hike
- a walking tour or outing, esp. of the self-conscious kind
Chambers 20th Century Dictionary


Do any of the doubters and knockers on this NG really believe that 4000 tube
workers would lose two days pay if there weren't real issues here. This was
a democratic, legal strike over real issues of job losses and safety. I am
writing an article about the strike at the moment and it will be published
on a couple of sites including www.zoneonelondon.co.uk it will detail all
the safety issues.



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In article .com,
writes
Why doesn't LU publish the 'before' and 'after' staffing ratios for the
station groups at the heart of this dispute?

It's been suggested to me that Full Time Equivalent figures would be
more revealing. After all, "15 staff" can mean 5 people on each of 3
7-hour shifts, or it can mean one person at a time, each person doing
1.5 hours a day. One can half the total work done and total salaries
without changing the "number of staff", by moving them all from full
time to half time

Are the before and after *duties* the same? If, for example, the new
rosters require staff to inspect every passageway and store room once an
hour, there will be less people on the gatelines and platforms even if
the FTE staff numbers haven't altered.

--
Clive D.W. Feather | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Please reply to the Reply-To address, which is:

"Do any of the doubters and knockers on this NG really believe that
4000 tube
workers would lose two days pay if there weren't real issues here"

Oh, 4,000 staff went on strike did they?

If that number went on strike and most of the system remained open,
clearly there is gross overstaffing anyway.


"democratic, legal strike"

Indeed, which is presumably why many exercised their democratic right
to carry on working.

Marc.

wrote in message
oups.com...
"Do any of the doubters and knockers on this NG really believe that
4000 tube
workers would lose two days pay if there weren't real issues here"

Oh, 4,000 staff went on strike did they?

If that number went on strike and most of the system remained open,
clearly there is gross overstaffing anyway.


"democratic, legal strike"

Indeed, which is presumably why many exercised their democratic right
to carry on working.

Marc.

A few scabs, ASLEF drivers who weren't balloted, TSSA members who live of
the backs of the RMT and some RMT drivers who weren't in the dipute. The
rest were unqualified and unlicensed office staff and managers.

Most staff (the 4000) who were balloted walked out of their own free will
because they know that the company is after shafting them.



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