TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk
 

"Neil Williams" wrote in message
.net...
On Sun, 29 Jun 2014 22:00:31 +0200, "tim....."
wrote:
Networks do go done once in a while. What are all those commuters
with
"online" season tickets going to do when it does?

Presumably be allowed to travel free. The incentive of course is for it
not to go down.

Yeah. But if this isn't the chosen solution you don't need to bother


storing someone's season ticket on a network server is a dumb thing
to do.

Why?

because you can't guarantee 100% access to it

And what about the percentage of the population that doesn't have a
credit/debit card

Buy single use barcoded tickets?

Oh so new technology that we have to install in stations (and with ticket
inspectors) that we don't have at the moment - to replace something that we
do have.

Pay by phone? (Very few people now don't have even a basic mobile).

Just having a phone doesn't give you the means to bill a ticket to, either
it, or your bank account. You still need that little extra. Something many
of the late adopters will be reluctant to have.

And what about non local journeys?

I expect predominantly online tickets of various types.

Really.

I have to say that so far, my experience of online tickets with DB (who seem
to have embraced this whole-heartedly) is that buying them is a right PITA.

And unless you have print at home (which the ToCs seem reluctant to adopt -
for whatever reason) you still need a technology to convert that online
purchase into a token that the traveler holds (not lease so that he can get
out of an exit barrier

Nah. I think that you have your desired solution and are trying as hard as
possible to shoehorn it into an inappropriate system..

tim

TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk
 

"Neil Williams" wrote in message
.net...
On Sun, 29 Jun 2014 20:46:09 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:
However, when I buy tickets ahead of time, it's always for a
specific
day. How would this "buying order" rule work if I bought a ticket
for
the end of August today, and a ticket for early August tomorrow?

Exactly.

In other news, I see they say you can only buy one ticket per day
[online]. So bad luck if you want to buy one for late August, and another
for early August, the same day.

Again useless :)

This is a back end problem. If they have decided that they can't solve if
for this electronic ticketing type they won't be able to solve it for any
electronic ticketing type

OTOH it could just be a step on the road to tne final solution, that isn't
broken.

tim



Neil

--
Neil Williams. Use neil before the at to reply.

TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk
 

In message , at 10:14:40 on Mon, 30
Jun 2014, tim..... remarked:

However, when I buy tickets ahead of time, it's always for a
specific day. How would this "buying order" rule work if I bought a
ticket for the end of August today, and a ticket for early August
tomorrow?

Exactly.

In other news, I see they say you can only buy one ticket per day
[online]. So bad luck if you want to buy one for late August, and
another for early August, the same day.

Again useless :)

This is a back end problem. If they have decided that they can't solve
if for this electronic ticketing type they won't be able to solve it
for any electronic ticketing type

OTOH it could just be a step on the road to tne final solution, that
isn't broken.

The issue here is when the passenger has ambiguous stored tickets. In
fact, if I buy an AP-ticket for the end of August, and one for the start
of August, it's much less ambiguous which one I want to use, because
they have a date associated with them.

For other situations, like the one I had yesterday[1], you can
disambiguate some of them by waiting until the journey finishes before
deciding.

Although that has other problems like I didn't get off and back on the
train home at Cambridge, so wouldn't be able to touch-out the return
half from London and touch-in the single to Ely. In fact most "Break of
Journey" situations and "split ticketing" stop working as soon as you go
'paperless'

[1] Bought tickets at Cambridge for both London and Ely, intending to
travel Cambridge-London-Cambridge-Ely.

ps The barriers at Cambridge were working at 7am, but the Liverpool St
ones were locked out on arrival, as were the Kings Cross ones when I
came back mid-afternoon.
--
Roland Perry

TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk
 

On Sun, 29 Jun 2014 10:41:33 +0200, tim..... wrote:


"David Walters" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 28 Jun 2014 10:55:54 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:
More difficult is if you have trips to different destinations loaded as
vouchers. Say you live in Grays and have vouchers for both Southend and
London, because you anticipate visiting both soon (and not necessarily
knowing in which order). Which voucher should it swap for a ticket?

Order is apparently important. From
http://www.c2c-online.co.uk/customer...c2c-smart-faqs "PLEASE
NOTE: Tickets can only be used in the order in which they were purchased".

That still doesn't help with deciding if a pax who travelled from home (A)
to work (X) on a return ticket and has just purchased a ticket from X to B,
is starting his journey to B or his return to A.

The A to X ticket was bought before the X to B ticket so the return
portion of the A to X ticket gets used when he enters X. Or at least
that is my understanding of the rules.

TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk
 

In message , at 09:48:12 on Mon, 30 Jun
2014, Roland Perry remarked:
For other situations, like the one I had yesterday[1], you can
disambiguate some of them by waiting until the journey finishes before
deciding.

Forgot to say that on arrival in London it should have been obvious I
wasn't using the Cambridge-Ely ticket yet.

Although that has other problems like I didn't get off and back on the
train home at Cambridge, so wouldn't be able to touch-out the return
half from London and touch-in the single to Ely. In fact most "Break of
Journey" situations and "split ticketing" stop working as soon as you
go 'paperless'

[1] Bought tickets at Cambridge for both London and Ely, intending to
travel Cambridge-London-Cambridge-Ely.

My journey yesterday could of course have been made on a pair of
singles, avoiding the issues at Cambridge completely. But not with
current pricing models where the single is only 10p less than the
return.
--
Roland Perry

TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk
 

In message , at 09:54:24 on
Mon, 30 Jun 2014, David Walters remarked:
More difficult is if you have trips to different destinations loaded as
vouchers. Say you live in Grays and have vouchers for both Southend and
London, because you anticipate visiting both soon (and not necessarily
knowing in which order). Which voucher should it swap for a ticket?

Order is apparently important. From
http://www.c2c-online.co.uk/customer...c2c-smart-faqs "PLEASE
NOTE: Tickets can only be used in the order in which they were purchased".

That still doesn't help with deciding if a pax who travelled from home (A)
to work (X) on a return ticket and has just purchased a ticket from X to B,
is starting his journey to B or his return to A.

The A to X ticket was bought before the X to B ticket so the return
portion of the A to X ticket gets used when he enters X. Or at least
that is my understanding of the rules.

C2C is also much simpler because they don't have any period returns.

Therefore once you've arrived at X the "return half X-A" is going to
expire that night anyway. In the situation that you stayed overnight
near X, and then used a pre-bought ticket X-B it should be possible to
make that work even if the X-B was bought before the A-X-A ticket.

The question remains, though, if the passenger presents himself at A
with a X-B (for tommorrow, bought yesterday) and an A-X-A (bought
today), will it accept the later-bought A-X-A or will it say "you must
use the X-B ticket first, you are at A not X, bugger off".
--
Roland Perry

TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk
 

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message , at
21:54:28 on Sun, 29 Jun 2014, Neil Williams
remarked:
Are you also anticipating permanently online RPIs? And all of this
(barriers and RPIs) over the entire country.

Yes. Give it a couple of years.

In the mean time perhaps the train companies can practice by making
their on-board wifi work rather better.

Than GA as we experienced yesterday morning, you mean? Indeed.

I did better than that on the Metropolitan Line to Uxbridge with the wifi
provided by my phone!

--
Colin Rosenstiel

TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk
 

On 29/06/2014 09:41, tim..... wrote:


"David Walters" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 28 Jun 2014 10:55:54 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:
More difficult is if you have trips to different destinations loaded as
vouchers. Say you live in Grays and have vouchers for both Southend and
London, because you anticipate visiting both soon (and not necessarily
knowing in which order). Which voucher should it swap for a ticket?

Order is apparently important. From
http://www.c2c-online.co.uk/customer...c2c-smart-faqs "PLEASE
NOTE: Tickets can only be used in the order in which they were
purchased".

That still doesn't help with deciding if a pax who travelled from home
(A) to work (X) on a return ticket and has just purchased a ticket from
X to B, is starting his journey to B or his return to A.

We could, of course, come up with some rules to resolve every such
conflicts, but that, I would suggest, would make user reluctance to use
such tickets reach the stratosphere

tim




That very problem was solved with version 2.1.4 of the ITSO Technical
Spec and the changes to the specification of the TYP24 IPE - sorry to
get technical, but you don't have much option with ITSO!

Suppose you have a number of rail tickets, encoded as ITSO TYP 24
products on you card, and you make a journey....

- at the point of initial validation (the entry gate), a list of the
potentially valid tickets on the card is written to the "Transient
Ticket" on the card.
- at subsequent valdiations - whether on train, at an intermediate
station, or at the final exit gate - that list is examined, and any
tickets that are not valid "here and now" are removed from the list.
- on final exit if the number of potentially valid tickets is 1, then we
are done. If it is zero there will be an excess or penalty to pay, with
a manual procedure to be follwed. If the number is greater than once
then again a manual procedure will be required. BUt that should only
happen in a small number of degenerate cases.

A lot of this is set out in an RSP document (RSPS3002 IIRC) which some
former colleagues mine helped to author a few years ago.

Hope that helps

Kevin

TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk
 

In message , at 16:48:39 on Mon, 30 Jun
2014, Kevin Ayton remarked:
More difficult is if you have trips to different destinations loaded as
vouchers. Say you live in Grays and have vouchers for both Southend and
London, because you anticipate visiting both soon (and not necessarily
knowing in which order). Which voucher should it swap for a ticket?

Order is apparently important. From
http://www.c2c-online.co.uk/customer...c2c-smart-faqs "PLEASE
NOTE: Tickets can only be used in the order in which they were
purchased".

That still doesn't help with deciding if a pax who travelled from home
(A) to work (X) on a return ticket and has just purchased a ticket from
X to B, is starting his journey to B or his return to A.

We could, of course, come up with some rules to resolve every such
conflicts, but that, I would suggest, would make user reluctance to use
such tickets reach the stratosphere

That very problem was solved with version 2.1.4 of the ITSO Technical
Spec and the changes to the specification of the TYP24 IPE - sorry to
get technical, but you don't have much option with ITSO!

Suppose you have a number of rail tickets, encoded as ITSO TYP 24
products on you card, and you make a journey....

- at the point of initial validation (the entry gate), a list of the
potentially valid tickets on the card is written to the "Transient
Ticket" on the card.
- at subsequent valdiations - whether on train, at an intermediate
station, or at the final exit gate - that list is examined, and any
tickets that are not valid "here and now" are removed from the list.
- on final exit if the number of potentially valid tickets is 1, then
we are done. If it is zero there will be an excess or penalty to pay,
with a manual procedure to be follwed. If the number is greater than
once then again a manual procedure will be required. BUt that should
only happen in a small number of degenerate cases.

A lot of this is set out in an RSP document (RSPS3002 IIRC) which some
former colleagues mine helped to author a few years ago.

Hope that helps

It all sounds very sensible, no it really does.

Are C2C implementing this, and if so why are they disseminating
misinformation to their customers?
--
Roland Perry

TfL acknowledges contactless technology risk
 

"David Walters" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 29 Jun 2014 10:41:33 +0200, tim.....
wrote:


"David Walters" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 28 Jun 2014 10:55:54 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:
More difficult is if you have trips to different destinations loaded as
vouchers. Say you live in Grays and have vouchers for both Southend and
London, because you anticipate visiting both soon (and not necessarily
knowing in which order). Which voucher should it swap for a ticket?

Order is apparently important. From
http://www.c2c-online.co.uk/customer...c2c-smart-faqs "PLEASE
NOTE: Tickets can only be used in the order in which they were
purchased".

That still doesn't help with deciding if a pax who travelled from home
(A)
to work (X) on a return ticket and has just purchased a ticket from X to
B,
is starting his journey to B or his return to A.

The A to X ticket was bought before the X to B ticket so the return
portion of the A to X ticket gets used when he enters X.

how does that help if the pax is actually going to B?

tim