Matt J Forbes wrote in
:

It seems to take a knowledgeable driver a fraction
of a second to press a few buttons, in order enter a destination, fare
type, and issue a ticket, when a fare-paying passenger boards a bus.
Surely, for accounting purposes, it would be much more accurate for
the driver to do the same for LA passes, only issuing the ticket as
zero-fare. This way, the company will be able to bill the LA for the
journies actually made, rather than just number of journies made -
which could be the entire length of a route, or just one or two stops
down the road.

Pressing the buttons is the relatively easy bit, though at the moment I
doubt many ticket machines have the capability to accept the identity of
the issuing authority, even supposing the driver can correctly interpret
whether its a district operating within a county scheme or a unitary
authority doing it for itself.

You then need to dump the data at the depot (coping with corrupt data,
late data, fraud etc etc), using different software for each of the
various types of ticket machines you have, more software to merge the
datasets, and probably an arrangement with a clearing house to accept
all your data and partition it out to the various issuing authorities.

Then you have to invoice them, and track and chase the invoices, deal
with questions and audits and so on. It's all doable, but not cheap to
buy or maintain.

ITSO is also not cheap, but the theory is that if all the bus companies
and LAs subscribe to it, there will at least be some economies of scale,
uniformity of data and a measure of fraud control. Scotland is making
some progress with that.

As with many schemes which increase the accuracy of a payment from A to
B, one side is likely to gain from the change and one will lose. Unless
both sides reckon they will be the winner it may be difficult to get
agreement to the change.

Peter

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| Peter Campbell Smith | Epsom | UK |