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... ^_-