Re: SlowTicket machine


On 15 Feb, 09:20, Roland Perry <rol...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In message
<98e1d6b0-d308-4f37-a6d3-dbc1cbe50...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, at
00:59:45 on Sun, 15 Feb 2009, Mizter T <mizte...@xxxxxxxxx> remarked:
 >... what Roland is saying actually - he focussed on

the potential for smartcard delivery of pre-purchased tickets as
opposed to a pay-as-you-go system (which would present massive
challenges and is arguably simply unworkable).

Indeed, I'm not sure a PAYG system makes sense when tickets cost in the
region of £100 (that's what credit cards are for, if you aren't paying
cash) and the network is very complex, including different prices for
different routings and a wildly uncorrelated system of "what defines
offpeak".

And what would you do when people didn't touch-out - charge an Open
First Single from Penzance to Wick?


That's *exactly* the crux of the matter, the absolutely fundamental
issue with a pay-as-you-go system on National Rail. Background for
those who don't know it - basically on London Underground/ DLR (and
those rail routes that accept Oyster pay-as-you-go) when one enters
the system one's Oyster card is debited with a £4 'entry charge' -
when one leaves the system the appropriate amount is refunded to the
card so only the correct fare was paid. This system is essentially
totally transparent to passengers who use it correctly - that is touch-
in at the beginning of the journey and touch-out at the end, but is
apparent to those who don't do this. (For completeness, I'll mention
that London Buses and Tramlink use a flat fare system so one only has
to touch-in at the beginning of one's journey.)

The situation is a little bit more complex than that - e.g. a
passenger doesn't actually need £4 on their card to enter the system,
they just need whatever the minimum fare is from that station (e.g.
£1.60 for a zone 1 journey). However if they fail to touch-out at the
other end then the £4 would be debited, leaving the card with a
negative balance of minus £2.40 - the card would then need to be
topped up to reach a positive balance before it could be used again.

This wouldn't work on the National Rail network - the equivalent would
be having a smartcard topped up with enough money for a King's Cross
to Finsbury Park journey, validating one's card at KX and then
boarding an intercity train to say Inverness and alighting at an
ungated station where no-one's checking your tickets on exit - e.g.
Pitlochry, or wherever really. OK, so one's smartcard would then have
a negative balance of minus £300 or whatever for the most expensive
potential single fare from KX (which might as well equate to whatever
the most expensive potential single fare is on the whole National Rail
network, full stop) - just chuck the smartcard away and get a new one.
Voila, one has just defrauded the railways for whatever the smartcard
initially cost plus the price of a KX - Finsbury Park local fare.

I dare say that suggestions might be made to make it more difficult to
simply bin the exhausted smartcard and move on to another one - e.g.
each smartcard would have to be registered, the holder would have to
pass a credit check and be deemed good to pay the potential full whack
fare of however many hundreds of pounds. But I don't think that would
be deemed workable, and I don't think there'd be enough takers to make
it worthwhile anyway.

To my mind smartcard pay-as-you-go systems only seem to be workable in
metropolitan areas - cities, conurbations and the like. Additionally
significant gating of the rail network's stations assists in
preventing the system being abused.

As you said earlier, smartcards could be used as a decent delivery
mechanism for pre-booked tickets (and that includes season tickets).
The other thing they could offer is carnets - my understanding (thanks
to the posts of Paul Scott and others) is that this is one of the
things that SWT is planning to offer with their upcoming smartcard
system.
.

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