Tube bosses: 'Wireless tickets too slow, we think' Transport for London's director of customer experience thinks wireless payments are still too slow for London's Tube, though he admits TfL hasn't tested them since 2009. Speaking at the Open Mobile Summit, TfL's Shashi Verma told the assembled that radio-based NFC payments were just too slow for the underground, but when …
Here's the issue. The gates are all about getting people through as fast as they can. Making them ticket machines as well will slow down the process considerably. People should have a ticket when they reach the gate.
Just imagine trying to get to work via London Bridge (i've seen crowds by the Jubilee line entrance 10 deep on semi-regular intervals) when 4 of the terminals are taken up with tourists buying tickets for their family...
TFl staff don't process any transactions on most Oyster cards - you top up at a machine using a CC/DD or do it online. Instead of one CC transaction (charges apply) and them multiple Oystercards (no charges) we would have multiple CC charges. Try getting a CC transaction authorised in M&S on a busy saturday afternoon in Oxford Street and it takes seconds as a minimum, with maybe 20 or 30 tills going in the shop at a time. Then try it with Waterloo Station gates at rush hour and you have something like 20 people a second trying to get through all the gates. It simply does not stack up.
There are absolutely no upsides to given TFL access to peoples CC's at ticket points.
Don''t try and fix what isn't broken.
"Don't try to fix what isn't broken."
Is exactly what people said about Oyster cards, it's what they said when old style paper tickets were phased out and magstripe tickets were put in, it's what they said when ticket gates when in.
I live in Reading, I no longer work in London, I don't need an oyster card for the very few times I go into London each year, but a paper ticket takes time to buy and is more expensive. If I could swipe my paywave card over an oyster reader and pay in 500ms with the correct ticket automatically sold to me, that would get me through the gates and into the underground far faster than all that tedious arsing about, working out which zone you're going to and which is the most appropriate ticket, then getting the correct change into the machine, no damn, I've not got the correct change, it'll have to be a note, or maybe a card...
That's why I store my Oyster in a separate wallet, I've just come back from Australia where they have something similar to the Oyster card called Myki. Stored them both in the same wallet and the machine complains that there are more than one cards, so you then have to stand there and take the appropriate card out...
And, on a similar topic, what about those of us who have Network Gold Cards ("annual season tickets in the former Network SouthEast area") "loaded" onto our Oyster Cards. This gives the Gold Card discount automatically on qualifying (off-peak) LU journeys. HTF will that be implemented with Pret-style payment ??
Mobile phone credit can be used. This gets around the requirement to own a credit card (lots of teens use public transport, own mobile phones, but do not have credit cards).
The major downside is that the transaction time for this is currently too long for transport, but it would be possible to do a "top up my fare card with my mobile credit" system instead of a direct bill per tap.
Although I'm not a native of London (travelling into the big village a couple of times a year) it does amaze me how many people do not have their oyster cards or tickets ready when they get to the gate, and proceed to dither around in their pockets/wallets/handbags for ages for their 'ticket to go'. Its usually greater than 300ms.
I don't know how to solve that though, other than having a device which detects lack of movement for say 1.5 seconds and releases these people through a trap door into a bear pit.
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Your supermarket must have better self-service machines than my local Tesco. In my experience, bagging as you scan shifts the weight around too much, confusing the system and resulting in numerous "Unexpected item in bagging area" messages that require a member of staff to override before you can continue scanning. I changed to from "bag as you scan" to "scan, then bag" on the advice of a staff member and now I whizz through much quicker than most of the self-scan amateurs around me.
They've been paying by bonk here on mobies as well as the SUICA/PASMO cards since before 2007 (on my first trip here I was surprised to see someone talking on the phone go up to the ticket gate say something like "hold on a mo" (in Japanese) and bonk the phone). The train companies own the card payment companies, though (there were two incompatible systems running in early 2007 - one by the private companies one by the former monopoly). By March they'd sorted out cross-compatibility, though and you could use either card, including boking the phone. I think their problem is more the style of gate than the phone payment system. Shinjuku station is the world's busiest and Tokyo station one of the world's largest (and not far behind on number of passengers) and they work pretty well at the gates. Payment options include CC debit, mobile bill and pre-pay so far as I know (though I haven't looked into it in detail - a prepay card topped up once every few weeks is good enough for me).
Yep, the entire SUICA setup does seem to work very well indeed. I've no idea why any other tech is even being considered elsewhere. And it's not just transport - load of shops, coffee stands, vending machines, etc. all use it.
In other words it really is a near universal system for small purchases, just like the West wants NFC to be. Except it's already been working for 5 years.
Call me a Luddite < "LUDDITE", but paying for stuff with a mobile is not something I'll ever want to do.
I've already got things like Tesco club cards and I know they are tracking my purchasing habits - which links right into where I live, my age and with the right partnerships involved, my income and all sorts of other areas of my life.
I accept that, because heck, they DO save you money. But I'm wary of it - I don't scan my loyalty card for every purchase I make.
When it comes to phones, I'm thinking, hold on, this little device in my hand can potentially hold so much personal data (which I entrust to mobile operators already), do I really want yet another third party involved - yet more tracking?
I'm not one of the tin foil hat brigade - any ideas that Big Brother is watching me are usually dispelled by the sheer ineptitude of our government - but giving away too much trackable data to me starts to make the idea of Big Brother more possible.
With an oyster card, I can be anonymous - pay with cold hard cash - untrackable for the most part (aside from all those CCTV cameras)
Perhaps I am becoming a Luddite - I fear a time when anonymous paper money and coins are no longer legal tender. When every single purchase I make is tracked directly back to me.
For now, as far as I'm concerned, Cash is King for items such as train tickets.
My privacy is already potentially violated in so many areas of my life - and heck, Tuttle Buttle.
If you make a journey on Oyster PayG involving a change through gatelines, you'll get an entry debit, (potential) exit credit, entry debit and (potential) exit credit...
South Bermondsey [National Rail] Entry -£4.60
London Bridge [National Rail] Exit £2.80
London Bridge [London Underground] Entry -£2.80
Walthamstow Central [London Underground] Exit £1.20
Include a return journey and that's eight entries, do that five days a week and that would be 40 extra lines on your credit/debit card statement. The only way I can see that not happening is if TfL keep the transactions 'offline' and only send them to the card provider say an hour after the last transaction but A) would that lead to increase in fraud? B) would your statement (the system) be capaple of showing "09 June 2012 Oyster - South Bermondsey - Walthamstow Central £3.40" (so you can audit / check for correct payment) instead of "09 June 2012 Oyster £3.40"?
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