Paul Corfield wrote:

It now looks like New York is going contactless too.

http://www.mastercard.com/us/paypass/subway/index.html

Interesting that it's a national scheme run by the banks, which means
it'll probably eventually manage universal acceptance (unlike Oyster).

Neil

wrote:

They reverse our system of having an electronic sign saying when the
next train is due; rather, they have a clock showing how long it's been
since the last train left. This can only go up to 10 minutes, so I'm
assuming that's minimum frequency. I saw it get to 9:57 at one point
so it was a tight thing!


A passenger information system that works on the presumption that
everything is running smoothly and trains really do come every ten
minutes... how bizarre!

They reverse our system of having an electronic sign saying when the
next train is due; rather, they have a clock showing how long it's been
since the last train left. ...

A passenger information system that works on the presumption that
everything is running smoothly and trains really do come every ten
minutes... how bizarre!

Or a passenger information system that provides the information that's
easy to provide instead of the information people actually want.
--
Mark Brader | "People tend to assume that things they don't know
Toronto | about are either safe or dangerous or useless,
| depending on their prejudices." -- Tim Freeman

Mark Brader wrote:

Or a passenger information system that provides the information that's
easy to provide instead of the information people actually want.

Quite possibly, and quite possibly it's existed since before it was
practical to provide more than a split-flap display showing the
destination, but not the time, of the next train - or, indeed, nothing
at all.

The UK has, these days, pretty advanced electronic passenger
information systems at a lot of stations. Some of this is due to
updating, but a lot is because there wasn't anything (at all) there
beforehand.

Neil

In article om,
writes
One interesting feature of the Kiev metro system is that the
interchange stations have different names for each line.

This seems to be common in Eastern European systems.

Bucuresti[*] has an interesting variation on this: the stations are
"whatever I" and "whatever II", in the order the stations were
built, *not* the order of line number.
[*] Often called Bucharest for some reason. The s should have a cedilla
under it.

--
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:

On Tue, 19 Sep 2006, Steve Fitzgerald wrote:

In message , Paul Corfield
writes

For most journeys, though, it's like New York - you just buy tokens
from the booth and it's one token per trip, no matter how long or
how short.

The New York City subway stopped accepting tokens in 2003.

Really? I was last there in 2001 so didn't know. Why did they do
this? What do they now accept instead?

They replaced it with the magnetic stored value / unlimited ride pass
called Metrocard. A great step forward in my view - once you've learnt
the correct swipe speed through the top mounted reader on the turnstile.

http://mta.info/metrocard/index.html

The only downside I found when I was there last year... I bought a
Metrocard with a 1 week 'travelcard' loaded the first week. Then I
realised as I was staying in Downtown Manhattan I was walking virtually
everywhere, so I thought I would just load some prepay on it the second
week like Oyster. No, you have to get a whole new card even though it
looks exactly the same and comes from the same machine. I think they're
missing a trick there as there were loads of dead Metrocards lying about
the place.

Is that such a big deal? Since the cards are flimsy little bits of
plastic, it's no worse than people binning paper tickets here. I'm sure
they will adopt non-contact reusable smartcards soon (and are trialling
it, as has been pointed out), though, for the same reasons we have.

The really dopey thing, i found, was that the ticket machines didn't sell
unlimited ride cards, only the carnet-like cards. And had a 6 USD limit to
the amount of change they'd give you, which, given that a six-ride card is
ten bucks and ATMs all give you twenties, is bloody annoying!

tom

--
They didn't have any answers -- they just wanted weed and entitlement.

Clive D. W. Feather wrote:

Bucuresti[*] has an interesting variation on this: the stations are
"whatever I" and "whatever II", in the order the stations were
built, *not* the order of line number.

This occurs on street signs (never seen it on a station) where place
names are duplicated in Germany, sometimes very close to one another.

Neil

Clive D. W. Feather wrote:
Bucuresti...Often called Bucharest for some reason.

Surely "Bucharest" is the English version of the city's name, in the
same vein as Cologne/Köln, Florence/Firenze etc. etc.

Patrick

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 13:33:47 +0100, "Clive D. W. Feather"
wrote:

In article om,
writes
One interesting feature of the Kiev metro system is that the
interchange stations have different names for each line.

This seems to be common in Eastern European systems.

Bucuresti[*] has an interesting variation on this: the stations are
"whatever I" and "whatever II", in the order the stations were
built, *not* the order of line number.

[*] Often called Bucharest for some reason.

Probably for the same reason that Roma is called Rome, Moskva is
called Moscow, and Paris is pronounced wrongly. Etc., etc., etc.

--
James Farrar
. @gmail.com

James Farrar wrote:

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 13:33:47 +0100, "Clive D. W. Feather"
wrote:

In article om,
writes
One interesting feature of the Kiev metro system is that the
interchange stations have different names for each line.

This seems to be common in Eastern European systems.

Bucuresti[*] has an interesting variation on this: the stations are
"whatever I" and "whatever II", in the order the stations were
built, *not* the order of line number.

[*] Often called Bucharest for some reason.

Probably for the same reason that Roma is called Rome, Moskva is
called Moscow, and Paris is pronounced wrongly. Etc., etc., etc.



Err, do we all have to refer to the �京 Subway from now on?!