On 21/01/2012 11:37, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 23:55:31 on Fri, 20
Jan 2012, " remarked:
That's easier if there are a finite number of players (eg TfL and half a
dozen "Network Southeast area" National Rail companies). Scaling it to
numerous authorities operating independent bridges could be a problem.
Imagine a different operator was charging tolls for every road bridge
from Tower Bridge to Windsor.

I wasn't talking about bridges, I was referring to transport.

My model was hypothesising about TfL running all the London Toll
Bridges, or alternative not, and them all being independently run.

I wonder why there isn't one Smart Card for the greater New York area,
similar to what we have here in London.

It sounds like there's "almost" one.

Yes, it does sound it, except for the one disparity that MTA will not
accept SmartLink cards. I wonder if that is because the MTA does not yet
(ever?) have proper readers installed for Smart cards or because they
just don't want to work with the Port Authority.

What does SEPTA use on its city transport, by the way? How about the
Newark City Subway?

On 21/01/2012 11:27, Roland Perry wrote:
It means that customers have to acquire a new smartcard (electronic
purse or ticket wallet) for every different application. I know that in
theory there are "multi-product" cards, but I don't know of any examples
in the wild, and whether for example trying to load a bus pass onto a
library ticket is going to fall foul of red tape at the bus depot or
library.

My bus-pass is also my library card and works fine in both. Other
council "products" not relevant to me can also be loaded on it.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.
Railway Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

On Jan 21, 12:07*pm, "
wrote:

On 21/01/2012 06:15, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Peter *wrote:

Oyster was originally going to be able to be used for other low value
purchases, such as newspapers and cups of coffee, in the way that Octopus is
used in Hong Kong, but this idea fell foul of banking regulation.

Ah! I wondered about that. Yet, pay-by-cell phone doesn't. Weird.

They do have pay-by-cell for parking here in London, however.

UIVMM none of the pay-by-phone (for parking) systems in the UK
actually take the payment directly from one's mobile bill / mobile
PAYG credit - they all require one to register with the provider (e.g.
https://www.myringgo.com/) first - which includes giving them your
credit/debit card details to store with your account - and then call
them in order to pay for parking.

On Jan 21, 6:15*am, "Adam H. Kerman" wrote:

Peter Masson wrote:
[...]
Oyster was originally going to be able to be used for other low value
purchases, such as newspapers and cups of coffee, in the way that Octopus is
used in Hong Kong, but this idea fell foul of banking regulation.

Ah! I wondered about that. Yet, pay-by-cell phone doesn't. Weird.

There isn't really any pay-by-mobile (aka cell) system for paying for
products / services at the shop counter in the UK, at least not yet.

On Jan 21, 11:34*am, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 22:35:08 on Fri, 20 Jan
2012, John Levine remarked:

They did trials using it to pay at McDonalds' drive-through on Long Island,
but nothing came of it. *Since you have to stop to pick up the order anyway,
tapping a credit card doesn't slow the process down much.

McD's in the UK is one of the (relatively few) places where you can use
paywave credit cards. Although I always feel a bit awkward using a
credit card for such small purchases.

You can of course use a Visa payWave debit card... if you've got one.
(Barclays have been one of the early movers in issuing payWave debit
cards.)

On Jan 20, 7:36*am, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 19:29:03 on
Thu, 19 Jan 2012, Michael Finfer remarked:

I doubt that a Smart Card would be used for bridge and tunnel tolls as
most cars in the greater New York area are equipped with special
transponders that toll gates read. They can also be used on other road
agencies' territories -- even in Ontario, in Canada.

Who knows, though?

It's the same technology, RFID, but tapping a smart card at a toll
booth defeats the big advantage that electronic tolling systems have:
no need to stop and open your window.

I'm not sure why any agency would go the smart card route for tolls.

Instead of cash, for non-regular users. There's a toll bridge/tunnel at
the Thames Estuary, for example, and while they have a transponder
scheme my usage of the crossing when I lived nearby was only perhaps
once a year. A contactless credit card seems a better bet than adding
interoperability to any particular transport smart card though.

Contactless payments at the Dartford Crossing (which is the toll
bridge/tunnel in the Thames Estuary to which Roland refers) would be a
useful innovation - at present they don't accept debit/credit cards as
a payment method whatsoever, so you either need cash or a "Dart-
Tag" (they do apparently take Euro coins/notes too, presumably at an
unfavourable exchange rate, but they don't advertise it).

Take up of the Dart-Tag isn't that high either, nor are there any
'express' Dart-Tag only lanes - instead there are 'exact change only +
Dart-Tag' lanes with buckets in which you throw the exact change. I
think there were Dart-Tag only lanes in the past, dunno why they were
ditched (poss because the relatively low take up of the Tags made them
an inefficient use of lanes in the toll plazas?).

http://www.highways.gov.uk/roads/projects/4065.aspx

On Jan 21, 12:26*pm, Graeme Wall wrote:

On 21/01/2012 11:27, Roland Perry wrote:

It means that customers have to acquire a new smartcard (electronic
purse or ticket wallet) for every different application. I know that in
theory there are "multi-product" cards, but I don't know of any examples
in the wild, and whether for example trying to load a bus pass onto a
library ticket is going to fall foul of red tape at the bus depot or
library.

My bus-pass is also my library card and works fine in both. *Other
council "products" not relevant to me can also be loaded on it.

There were plans for combined Oyster + local library cards, to be
issued by London Borough councils, but this idea never took off for
whatever reason. (I can see all sorts of reasons why it could get
complicated in practice.) I'm not sure any London Borough councils
issue multi-purpose library + leisure centre cards either, as some
councils elsewhere do (perhaps partially because the operation of
leisure centres is often outsourced, though not always to private
companies - GLL and Fusion Lifestyle, who operate leisure/sports
facilities on behalf of many Boroughs, are charitable social
enterprises). Some London Boroughs of course are doing their best at
ridding themselves of the burden of providing a widespread public
library service, but that's another matter...

In message
, at
04:29:14 on Sat, 21 Jan 2012, Mizter T remarked:
They do have pay-by-cell for parking here in London, however.

UIVMM none of the pay-by-phone (for parking) systems in the UK
actually take the payment directly from one's mobile bill / mobile
PAYG credit - they all require one to register with the provider (e.g.
https://www.myringgo.com/) first - which includes giving them your
credit/debit card details to store with your account - and then call
them in order to pay for parking.

I was about to ask:

"How is the money abstracted - is it direct off the phone's
credit (as if it was an expensive call of some kind), or at
second hand by sending reverse-charge SMS?"

....but you seem to have an answer already.

That's back to the sort of proprietary per-vendor schemes I've been
moaning about, where you have to register with each one separately to
"top up" or get a statement.
--
Roland Perry

In message
, at
04:53:09 on Sat, 21 Jan 2012, Mizter T remarked:
It means that customers have to acquire a new smartcard (electronic
purse or ticket wallet) for every different application. I know that in
theory there are "multi-product" cards, but I don't know of any examples
in the wild, and whether for example trying to load a bus pass onto a
library ticket is going to fall foul of red tape at the bus depot or
library.

My bus-pass is also my library card and works fine in both. *Other
council "products" not relevant to me can also be loaded on it.

There were plans for combined Oyster + local library cards, to be
issued by London Borough councils, but this idea never took off for
whatever reason.

My bus card is actually a "Nottingham City Card", and if I was a
resident of the City (not the County) I'd have other "City" products
loaded onto it. For the purposes of this discussion that's still a
"single vendor" card.

http://www.citycardnottingham.co.uk/

[The retail savings are a bit underwhelming (eg one branch of Holland &
Barrett with 10% off for seniors on Thu only), my kids get much better
coverage with an NUS card. And of course, it doesn't deduct my
discounted purchases from the card's purse, it's just a token saying
"give this jolly decent chap a discount"].
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 12:26:40 on Sat, 21 Jan
2012, Graeme Wall remarked:
It means that customers have to acquire a new smartcard (electronic
purse or ticket wallet) for every different application. I know that in
theory there are "multi-product" cards, but I don't know of any examples
in the wild, and whether for example trying to load a bus pass onto a
library ticket is going to fall foul of red tape at the bus depot or
library.

My bus-pass is also my library card and works fine in both. Other
council "products" not relevant to me can also be loaded on it.

Yes, it wasn't a very well chosen example, as there are some combined
municipal buses and libraries (although I'm registered with a Notts
County library not a Notts City Library, oh the joys of living close to
a unitary authority).

But I don't think I could load my Notts County library card onto my
Notts City bus card).
--
Roland Perry