On Aug 4, 4:51 pm, Roland Perry wrote:


Sounds great; so it's "Bank of ATOC" and not "Bank of ToC" that my money
gets debited from by whatever ToC I finish my journey at and who does
the sums about how much it should have cost to get there from where I
started. Presumably grippers on the train will do stuff like alerting
the card as one that's been used on a "savers banned" train, so I'm
charged a full open fare rather than a saver when I wave out?
--

As things stand at present, your money won't be debited by anyone. No-
one has yet discussed having a Pay As You Go facility on National Rail
AFAIK and that's certainly not included in the recent franchise
commitments. How many people do you think will keep their cards topped
up with a couple of hundred quid on the off-chance that they're going
to have to buy an SOR from London to Leeds? The intention is that you
will buy your ticket in advance either through the internet or by
phone, quoting your smartcard number. When you get to the station
you'll simply tap your card on a reader to upload the ticket.

On Sat, 4 Aug 2007 16:43:31 +0100, Roland Perry
mangled uncounted electrons thus:

In message , at 13:57:03 on
Sat, 4 Aug 2007, Paul Corfield remarked:

snip

It should not make any difference. An ITSO compatible card will be
recognised by all ITSO devices regardless of where that card was
originally used or where it is being used.

Unless you can convince me otherwise, ITSO is just a technical
specification. It's doesn't address the commercial relationships between
operators. For example, ITSO cards are used by Cheshire buses. But will
a Cheshire bus pass also be able to buy me a SWT ticket from Basingstoke
to Southampton? Not unless there is a commercial and financial tie-up.

I'm wondering if there will even be such a connection between different
ToC cards. (It's obvious there should be, but is that currently in the
plan?)

If the card held a ticket that was valid at the location you were at
then it would be accepted as being valid.

That assumes I have pre-bought a specific ticket, which removes the
majority of the flexibility. In other words I'm not just "touching in",
at a barrier, but previously have queue up to "touch in" at a machine
and tell it where I want to go to, so it can pre-load the ticket.

Oyster has a wrinkle which would I think cover this bit. When you
add money to your card online, you have to specify at which LUL
station you will next use the card; when you touch the card to
the reader the credit is verified/added to the card. This would
work perfectly for the 'specific ticket' scenario you cite - the
ticket would be activated when you pass through the barrier at
the commencement station...

Which ToC gets the money for a split journey is another matter,
but surely not an insurmountable one - if there's a genuine will
to solve it, of course...

snip

Martin D. Pay
Oyster has one advantage - it's proven technology which works...

On Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:11:46 +0100, Dave Newt
mangled uncounted electrons
thus:



wrote:
On 3 Aug, 08:59, Bob wrote:
http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/...9168037,00.htm

Of course this will mean the need for cyber gripping.

Why oh why is it assumed that everyone has a mobile ? And what happens
with a mobile ticket if your battery goes flat ?

It's not much different to expecting people not to leave their wallet at
home, is it?

Heh. It is for those of us who don't own a mobile...

Martin D. Pay
Neither my job nor my private life requires that I own a mobile
phone...

On Aug 4, 6:14 pm, Martin D. Pay
wrote:


Which ToC gets the money for a split journey is another matter,
but surely not an insurmountable one - if there's a genuine will
to solve it, of course...


Split journeys already occur with magnetic card tickets. Why should a
ticket loaded on a smartcard be dealt with any differently?

On Sat, 04 Aug 2007 04:41:42 -0700, W14_Fishbourne
mangled uncounted electrons thus:

On Aug 4, 12:26 pm, Graham Murray wrote:
W14_Fishbourne writes:
Secondly, trying to work out the correct fare for your PAYG journey is
difficult enough on London Underground, with a fairly simple route and
fares structure, never mind on National Rail with its mass of
different routes and fares. (If you want to know what I mean, take a
journey from Gunnersbury to Hanger Lane via Turnham Green, Ealing
Broadway, and North Acton. You won't have stepped outside zone 3 but
just see what fare you get charged.)

The solution to that is relatively simple. Make it like London Buses and
make people touch in when entering (and maybe leaving) a train rather
than (or as well as) at the barrier line at the stations. That way the
exact journey taken is recorded, you are charged the appropriate fare
and it is allocated to the TOC(s) which you actually used rather than on
a statistical 'divy up' basis. This would probably work best if rather
than the 'money' being stored on the card it worked more like a
credit/debit card with each journey debiting the user's account on a
central system.

It's difficult enough getting people to touch-in and touch-out
properly at the ends of their journeys when there's no gateline (or to
do so when the gatelines left open). You clearly don't travel by train
in the rush hour - I can just imagine what will happen to station
dwell times if people have to queue up to touch-in with their
smartcards as they board a train!

There doesn't seem to be a problem on the tube London's buses -
and a bendy bus is not too different from a train, when you look
at it - long, narrow and with multiple entry/exit points.

I wonder if you could make a system like Oyster work on
overground trains, actually. Something like:

Touch smart-ticket to reader to enter platform from
concourse/street/booking hall/cubbyhole with ticket
machine/whatever. The barrier will know that this is someone with
a valid ticket of some sort entering the platform and will make
no charge, just open the barrier. (If you try to enter the
platform at a station outside your ticket's validity the barrier
simply won't open, of course. You would need to install barriers
at all stations, but that would have to be seen as a necessary
part of the cost of introducing such a system.)

Touch ticket to reader on train. Journey 'activated' - and no
problem allocating money to correct ToC. (If you change ToC as
part of the journey, touch ticket to reader on new train. No
extra charge if journey remains within the parameters of the
ticket purchased but change of ToC recorded for purpose of
allocating monies.) And I don't see an insurmountable problem in
making it possible for the on-train readers to know when they
'hit' each station on the train's route for ticket validation
purposes.

Touch ticket to reader at exit barrier of destination station.
Journey recorded as finished, barrier opens (unless parameters of
permissible journey not met, in which case lights, sirens, and
horde of 18-stone grippers descend on traveler... ^_^ )

As far as I can see this can all be done with existing
technology. And you could still have grippers with hand-held
readers on trains doing spot checks as at present, to catch those
who haven't touched their ticket to the on-train reader (or who
vaulted over the barriers at the 'start' station!

This is just a quick ten minutes of pondering - I have no doubt
that folks reading this will be able to spot flaws of varying
seriousness in the above. But it's certainly worth a debate, no?

Martin D. Pay
Better than a d*mned silly system using mobile phones... ^_-

On Sat, 04 Aug 2007 09:45:33 -0700, W14_Fishbourne wrote:

As things stand at present, your money won't be debited by anyone. No-
one has yet discussed having a Pay As You Go facility on National Rail
AFAIK and that's certainly not included in the recent franchise
commitments. How many people do you think will keep their cards topped
up with a couple of hundred quid on the off-chance that they're going
to have to buy an SOR from London to Leeds? The intention is that you
will buy your ticket in advance either through the internet or by
phone, quoting your smartcard number. When you get to the station
you'll simply tap your card on a reader to upload the ticket.

But that's not very different from the present situation where you buy
in advance via phone or web, then pick up from a FastTicket machine by
inserting your card.

If desired, a FastTicket-type machine that just dispenses pre-bought
tickets could be installed at each station (so those just collecting
tickets don't have to queue behind those buying them).

It would still be a *little* slower than collecting just by passing
through the ticket barriers with your smartcard, but is it really
worth developing and installing a smartcard system when there's an
existing technology that's already implemented and almost as good?

"Martin D. Pay" wrote in message
...


Which ToC gets the money for a split journey is another matter,
but surely not an insurmountable one - if there's a genuine will
to solve it, of course...

How do you think it works at the moment? I go to my local station, and buy a
ticket to say Southampton. I walk to the platform and get on the first
train, it could be Southern, SWT or FGW. They each get a part of the fare.
How they do it is no concern of mine, but they'll have to do the same when
the ticket is on a card...

Paul

"W14_Fishbourne" wrote in message
ps.com...
On Aug 4, 4:51 pm, Roland Perry wrote:


Sounds great; so it's "Bank of ATOC" and not "Bank of ToC" that my money
gets debited from by whatever ToC I finish my journey at and who does
the sums about how much it should have cost to get there from where I
started. Presumably grippers on the train will do stuff like alerting
the card as one that's been used on a "savers banned" train, so I'm
charged a full open fare rather than a saver when I wave out?
--

As things stand at present, your money won't be debited by anyone. No-
one has yet discussed having a Pay As You Go facility on National Rail
AFAIK and that's certainly not included in the recent franchise
commitments. How many people do you think will keep their cards topped
up with a couple of hundred quid on the off-chance that they're going
to have to buy an SOR from London to Leeds? The intention is that you
will buy your ticket in advance either through the internet or by
phone, quoting your smartcard number. When you get to the station
you'll simply tap your card on a reader to upload the ticket.


Its interesting that you should pour cold water on PAYG, of course the
evidence from LU is that they have to charge the max fare with PAYG to
ensure people touch out. As you rightly suggest, what would the default
'entry fee' have to be for NR?

I would have thought travelcard type season tickets would be the first to
migrate to smartcard.

Paul

On Aug 4, 8:27 pm, "Paul Scott"
wrote:


Its interesting that you should pour cold water on PAYG, of course the
evidence from LU is that they have to charge the max fare with PAYG to
ensure people touch out. As you rightly suggest, what would the default
'entry fee' have to be for NR?

Penzance to Wick FOR?


I would have thought travelcard type season tickets would be the first to
migrate to smartcard.

Precisely!

In message , at 18:14:58 on
Sat, 4 Aug 2007, Martin D. Pay
remarked:

It should not make any difference. An ITSO compatible card will be
recognised by all ITSO devices regardless of where that card was
originally used or where it is being used.

Unless you can convince me otherwise, ITSO is just a technical
specification. It's doesn't address the commercial relationships between
operators. For example, ITSO cards are used by Cheshire buses. But will
a Cheshire bus pass also be able to buy me a SWT ticket from Basingstoke
to Southampton? Not unless there is a commercial and financial tie-up.

I'm wondering if there will even be such a connection between different
ToC cards. (It's obvious there should be, but is that currently in the
plan?)

If the card held a ticket that was valid at the location you were at
then it would be accepted as being valid.

That assumes I have pre-bought a specific ticket, which removes the
majority of the flexibility. In other words I'm not just "touching in",
at a barrier, but previously have queue up to "touch in" at a machine
and tell it where I want to go to, so it can pre-load the ticket.

Oyster has a wrinkle which would I think cover this bit. When you
add money to your card online, you have to specify at which LUL
station you will next use the card; when you touch the card to
the reader the credit is verified/added to the card. This would
work perfectly for the 'specific ticket' scenario you cite - the
ticket would be activated when you pass through the barrier at
the commencement station...

That assumes you have ordered the ticket online first, and also that
your plans don't change and you set off from a different station (which
is exactly what happened to me the first time I tried to add credit
online to my Oyster - beginners bad luck perhaps).

Which ToC gets the money for a split journey is another matter,
but surely not an insurmountable one - if there's a genuine will
to solve it, of course...

As I keep saying, it's not dividing the money up, but needing to equip
the entire system (not just those routes operated by the most recent new
franchisees) with terminals for PAYG to work at all.
--
Roland Perry