Paul Corfield wrote:

I obviously don't know the precise details of the Swedish scheme but I'd
guess you do not have the immense complexity and long standing rules
that London's cash fare system has. Establishing a pre-pay system
alongside such complexity is immensely difficult and will always result
in anomalies which then result in complaints and confusion.

You have a point here, even if we have some complex combination of fare
schemes here too. Especially the train operating companies often
distance-based fares in combination with each county's own zonal fares
leads to a situation where it may be cheaper to buy a ticket for a
little longer journey than you actually are going to take, just to cross
a county boundary and get another fare scheme for your ticket...

The only place in the world that has regular smart card validation on
exit from buses is Singapore [1]. I have just been catching up with how
their system works and it seems rather clever. You validate on entry
where a maximum fare is deducted. The on vehicle validators are only
enabled for a short time prior to arrival (within 100 metres) at a stop
and 20 seconds after departure. The validator by the driver can work in
entry and exit mode - to deal with those people who may need to exit via
the front door but exit mode is only set for a very short time before it
reverts to entry only. There are dire warnings about double deduction of
fares if you exit via the front if the validator has gone into entry
only mode. Most "end of trip" validation is expected via the exit
validators which calculate your fare and then add back any value due for
the journey undertaken. Now I accept Singapore is a far more
controlled society than the UK will ever be but it seems that they have
achieved on buses what TfL is trying to provide on its rail network and
is using exactly the same model.

Very interesting to read, thanks very much for this information about
Hongkong.

I agree with you that it will be very interesting indeed if the Swedish
scheme can get high levels of exit validation on buses (or any other
vehicle for that matter). I'd certainly love to know what the fare based
incentives are to ensure that people validate (assuming, of course, that
they opt to have them).

Unless we touch out we will have to pay the maximum fare possible with
that vehicle so there will be a very strong incentive, especially on
long journeys, but many people here critisize the new system because
there is a great risk that people forget to touch out and pay much more
than they should have done.

It will work in such way that when we touch in when entering a vehicle
the validator will deduct the maximum fare possible with that vehicle
(from this stop to the terminus). We won't need to have all that money
on the card, the balance can be negative, but it will not be possible to
start a new journey with a card with a negative balance. To allow
negative balances without the risk for the county to lose money we will
have to pay a refundable deposit when buying the card. So long very much
like Oyster, also that no money will be deducted on entry if we touch in
within an area for which we have a valid season ticket on the card.

But there are also differences, all validators will be entry/exit
bidirectional. The first touch will be entry and the second touch will
be exit. On trains where pre-pay cards are not valid but season tickets
are, the ticket inspectors will not have card readers so we will have to
keep a receipt from the time we bought the card showing that it contains
a valid ticket if we travel on such trains and this actually complicates
things rather than simplifies compared to paper tickets. Also, for
pre-pay cards, the deposit will be 100 SEK (~ £7.40) which is... a quite
high deposit. Another odd thing, the pre-pay fare will be distance-based
outside three concentric zones around City of Gothenburg and outside
local town centres, while cash single tickets and day-cards will still
be zonal all over this county as they have been for many years.

I think I will still recommend visitors to buy some kind of day-card and
explain where they are valid instead of trying to explain how pre-pay
cards work...

--
Olof Lagerkvist
ICQ: 724451
Web: http://here.is/olof