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ITSO Travelcards
In message , at
13:32:32 on Fri, 12 Sep 2014, Matthew Dickinson remarked: I'm not sure whether the ITSO only EMT gateline would be considered to be in a Travelcard zone. Given the first stop of Luton Airport Parkway then until Oyster is extended we shouldn't ever be using them. And even after it is extended, a Z1-9 Travelcard won't be valid. -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
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ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 12:51:11
on Fri, 14 Nov 2014, remarked: This is because of a deficiency in the ITSO technology. At present, it is not compatible with buses which start with some letters (routes prefixed or suffixed with _U_ being a particular problem, e.g. U1). Those bus routes would not therefore be recognised by the ITSO system. Does ITSO use a capital U as some sort of escape code, or what else could explain this very strange behaviour? -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote: On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 12:51:11 -0600, wrote: In article , (Richard) wrote: On Fri, 12 Sep 2014 16:12:03 -0500, wrote: In article , (Matthew Dickinson) wrote: TfL buses work fine. The ETM flashes up ITSO card. I haven't tried Tramlink yet. Curious. My National Bus Concession card didn't work this week. I tried it on 3 buses too. A card I saw yesterday showed "ITSO card" and something like "Show to driver" with an error beep. So it's clearly on the way. I haven't seen any announcement yet. This was on a 507 in the usual configuration, air-conditioning on and windows open. But that's another rant... I wrote to Caroline Pidegon and got this intriguing reply which I thought would interest the team he "Thanks for forwarding this on to us. I have looked into the matter and can confirm that English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS) passes cannot currently be read electronically by our buses. Passengers with an ENCTS issued by a council outside London can still use it on our buses by showing it to the driver. This is because of a deficiency in the ITSO technology. At present, it is not compatible with buses which start with some letters (routes prefixed or suffixed with _U_ being a particular problem, e.g. U1). Those bus routes would not therefore be recognised by the ITSO system. We are working with ITSO to resolve this problem effectively. In the meantime, as noted above, passengers should be able to board the bus by showing the driver the card." I find that explanation very odd. So all the unibus services run in various cities in England with route numbers prefixed with "U" can't accept ITSO cards? I frankly don't believe that. There are 5 "U" routes in Southampton and a route called Unibus in Canterbury. While designed for students they're normal public services and will accept ITSO concessionary passes from English local authorities. Exeter city services are famously lettered rather than numbered. There are also loads of letter prefixed routes across the UK and I'm amazed that there could be even a partial situation whereby some routes cannot read and accept ITSO smartcards. This is particularly the case where local authorities rely on electronic data for usage information for reimbursement purposes. I trusted the denizens of u.t.l would come up with comments like this. I agree it is a bizarre excuse. What is not revealed is the financial consequences which I suspect mean that TfL lose money where drivers don't register the cards shown to them. Note I'm not saying Ms Pidgeon is "lying". I just don't buy the explanation as surely the issue has arisen before now and should have been resolved? I agree. I wasn't expecting a response like this at all. Just to be clear. What I quoted is from an email to Caroline Pidgeon's researcher from someone in TfL, not her opinion in any way. -- Colin Rosenstiel |
ITSO Travelcards
On 14/11/2014 20:05, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 12:51:11 -0600, wrote: [snip] I find that explanation very odd. So all the unibus services run in various cities in England with route numbers prefixed with "U" can't accept ITSO cards? I frankly don't believe that. There are 5 "U" routes in Southampton and a route called Unibus in Canterbury. While designed for students they're normal public services and will accept ITSO concessionary passes from English local authorities. Exeter city services are famously lettered rather than numbered. There are also loads of letter prefixed routes across the UK and I'm amazed that there could be even a partial situation whereby some routes cannot read and accept ITSO smartcards. This is particularly the case where local authorities rely on electronic data for usage information for reimbursement purposes. Note I'm not saying Ms Pidgeon is "lying". I just don't buy the explanation as surely the issue has arisen before now and should have been resolved? [/snip] Paul, you are right - it is a very opdd explanation. It seems to have conflated two issues. Yes, there are some constraints within ITSO which can prevent certain letters being used in certain circumstances to record a route number in a trasnaction record. But that can be circumvented, and in any case the transaction record doesn't have to show the same route number that the public sees. More likely the ITSO on Prestige rollout hasn't hit all the buses yet. The buses need both the ITSO 'shell and product keys' so they can read the ENCTS cards and the concession products on them., and they also need the 'commercial rules' to know that they can accept these cards. My guess would be that one or the other hasn't bee completed yet. Just my £0.02 contribution Kevin |
ITSO Travelcards
In article ,
(Kevin Ayton) wrote: On 14/11/2014 20:05, Paul Corfield wrote: On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 12:51:11 -0600, wrote: [snip] I find that explanation very odd. So all the unibus services run in various cities in England with route numbers prefixed with "U" can't accept ITSO cards? I frankly don't believe that. There are 5 "U" routes in Southampton and a route called Unibus in Canterbury. While designed for students they're normal public services and will accept ITSO concessionary passes from English local authorities. Exeter city services are famously lettered rather than numbered. There are also loads of letter prefixed routes across the UK and I'm amazed that there could be even a partial situation whereby some routes cannot read and accept ITSO smartcards. This is particularly the case where local authorities rely on electronic data for usage information for reimbursement purposes. Note I'm not saying Ms Pidgeon is "lying". I just don't buy the explanation as surely the issue has arisen before now and should have been resolved? [/snip] Paul, you are right - it is a very opdd explanation. It seems to have conflated two issues. Yes, there are some constraints within ITSO which can prevent certain letters being used in certain circumstances to record a route number in a trasnaction record. But that can be circumvented, and in any case the transaction record doesn't have to show the same route number that the public sees. More likely the ITSO on Prestige rollout hasn't hit all the buses yet. The buses need both the ITSO 'shell and product keys' so they can read the ENCTS cards and the concession products on them., and they also need the 'commercial rules' to know that they can accept these cards. My guess would be that one or the other hasn't bee completed yet. Just my £0.02 contribution Don't they all have to handle ITSO cards now to allow Southern's "The Key" card to be handled correctly and charges deducted? -- Colin Rosenstiel |
ITSO Travelcards
In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote: On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 18:20:00 -0600, wrote: In article , (Kevin Ayton) wrote: Paul, you are right - it is a very opdd explanation. It seems to have conflated two issues. Yes, there are some constraints within ITSO which can prevent certain letters being used in certain circumstances to record a route number in a trasnaction record. But that can be circumvented, and in any case the transaction record doesn't have to show the same route number that the public sees. More likely the ITSO on Prestige rollout hasn't hit all the buses yet. The buses need both the ITSO 'shell and product keys' so they can read the ENCTS cards and the concession products on them., and they also need the 'commercial rules' to know that they can accept these cards. My guess would be that one or the other hasn't bee completed yet. Just my £0.02 contribution Don't they all have to handle ITSO cards now to allow Southern's "The Key" card to be handled correctly and charges deducted? You are right that Southern's Key does have to be handled by buses in terms of processing a Travelcard held on the card. I am not sure that any charges can be deducted because PAYG does not work on ITSO cards in the same way as for Oyster. That does raise a little question in my head as to what happens if someone has an Out Boundary Z26 travelcard on a Key Card and travels by train into Zone 1. Do they get penalty fared? AIUI ITSO relies on "product definitions" being recognised by readers. If the definitions of English concessionary permits haven't been loaded then cards can't be processed. I do think the readers recognise the presence of an ENCTS ITSO card though. I'm sure I've seen people present them on TfL buses and the error beeps sound. I assume the definitions for Travelcards and national rail tickets into the zonal area have been loaded on the TfL readers for Key and C2C Smart users. Aha! The Southern product is more limited than I understood. We are looking forward to their developments in Cambridge now of course. Indeed if you try to buy a ticket from the GTR web sites they all go to the Southern site. We are promised "The Key" real soon now. -- Colin Rosenstiel |
ITSO Travelcards
On Saturday, 15 November 2014 14:49:24 UTC, wrote:
In article , (Paul Corfield) wrote: On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 18:20:00 -0600, wrote: In article , (Kevin Ayton) wrote: Paul, you are right - it is a very opdd explanation. It seems to have conflated two issues. Yes, there are some constraints within ITSO which can prevent certain letters being used in certain circumstances to record a route number in a trasnaction record. But that can be circumvented, and in any case the transaction record doesn't have to show the same route number that the public sees. More likely the ITSO on Prestige rollout hasn't hit all the buses yet. The buses need both the ITSO 'shell and product keys' so they can read the ENCTS cards and the concession products on them., and they also need the 'commercial rules' to know that they can accept these cards. My guess would be that one or the other hasn't bee completed yet. Just my £0.02 contribution Don't they all have to handle ITSO cards now to allow Southern's "The Key" card to be handled correctly and charges deducted? You are right that Southern's Key does have to be handled by buses in terms of processing a Travelcard held on the card. I am not sure that any charges can be deducted because PAYG does not work on ITSO cards in the same way as for Oyster. That does raise a little question in my head as to what happens if someone has an Out Boundary Z26 travelcard on a Key Card and travels by train into Zone 1. Do they get penalty fared? AIUI ITSO relies on "product definitions" being recognised by readers. If the definitions of English concessionary permits haven't been loaded then cards can't be processed. I do think the readers recognise the presence of an ENCTS ITSO card though. I'm sure I've seen people present them on TfL buses and the error beeps sound. I assume the definitions for Travelcards and national rail tickets into the zonal area have been loaded on the TfL readers for Key and C2C Smart users. Aha! The Southern product is more limited than I understood. We are looking forward to their developments in Cambridge now of course. Indeed if you try to buy a ticket from the GTR web sites they all go to the Southern site. We are promised "The Key" real soon now. -- Colin Rosenstiel Southern's version of PAYG is called Keygo. It requires a card auto-topup to be set, and the fares charged are calculated in the back office. It's only available at the moment in the Crawley and Brighton areas on rail, Metrobus and Brighton Buses. |
ITSO Travelcards
In article ,
(Matthew Dickinson) wrote: On Saturday, 15 November 2014 14:49:24 UTC, wrote: In article , (Paul Corfield) wrote: On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 18:20:00 -0600, wrote: In article , (Kevin Ayton) wrote: Paul, you are right - it is a very opdd explanation. It seems to have conflated two issues. Yes, there are some constraints within ITSO which can prevent certain letters being used in certain circumstances to record a route number in a trasnaction record. But that can be circumvented, and in any case the transaction record doesn't have to show the same route number that the public sees. More likely the ITSO on Prestige rollout hasn't hit all the buses yet. The buses need both the ITSO 'shell and product keys' so they can read the ENCTS cards and the concession products on them., and they also need the 'commercial rules' to know that they can accept these cards. My guess would be that one or the other hasn't bee completed yet. Just my £0.02 contribution Don't they all have to handle ITSO cards now to allow Southern's "The Key" card to be handled correctly and charges deducted? You are right that Southern's Key does have to be handled by buses in terms of processing a Travelcard held on the card. I am not sure that any charges can be deducted because PAYG does not work on ITSO cards in the same way as for Oyster. That does raise a little question in my head as to what happens if someone has an Out Boundary Z26 travelcard on a Key Card and travels by train into Zone 1. Do they get penalty fared? AIUI ITSO relies on "product definitions" being recognised by readers. If the definitions of English concessionary permits haven't been loaded then cards can't be processed. I do think the readers recognise the presence of an ENCTS ITSO card though. I'm sure I've seen people present them on TfL buses and the error beeps sound. I assume the definitions for Travelcards and national rail tickets into the zonal area have been loaded on the TfL readers for Key and C2C Smart users. Aha! The Southern product is more limited than I understood. We are looking forward to their developments in Cambridge now of course. Indeed if you try to buy a ticket from the GTR web sites they all go to the Southern site. We are promised "The Key" real soon now. Southern's version of PAYG is called Keygo. It requires a card auto-topup to be set, and the fares charged are calculated in the back office. It's only available at the moment in the Crawley and Brighton areas on rail, Metrobus and Brighton Buses. I was more thinking of automatic pickup at gates of tickets bought online. That's the desperate need at Cambridge where ticket vending capacity is stretched beyond breaking point at the strangest of times. Queues out of the door between 9 and 10 on Saturday mornings I knew about but 4 on a Friday afternoon (according to a Tweet by Mary Beard) was a new one yesterday. -- Colin Rosenstiel |
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Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 08:49:22 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014, remarked: We are looking forward to their developments in Cambridge now of course. Indeed if you try to buy a ticket from the GTR web sites they all go to the Southern site. We are promised "The Key" real soon now. I wonder if we'll need to get a new The Key for Great Northern. I already have a Southern The Key and an Oxford Bus The Key, but I haven't yet had a chance to see if they are interoperable. Last time I tried not even the Southern The Key was usable at Victoria, although now it clearly must be. I currently possess a Southern "The Key", but alas am yet to use it. The main place I would kill for it to work is Gatwick Airport - just being able to pick up tickets at the gate avoiding the /dreadful/ queues at Gatwick would be fantastic (i.e. PAYG is not the requirement for me personally.) It seems to be a race though as to which will get to Gatwick first - The Key or Oyster... Gatwick is a great airport these days, utterly transformed by MAG following the years of BAA's disdain, but the railway station really lets it down. |
ITSO Travelcards
In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote: In message , at 10:42:56 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014, remarked: I was more thinking of automatic pickup at gates of tickets bought online. That's the desperate need at Cambridge where ticket vending capacity is stretched beyond breaking point at the strangest of times. Queues out of the door between 9 and 10 on Saturday mornings I knew about but 4 on a Friday afternoon (according to a Tweet by Mary Beard) was a new one yesterday. I've joined in the tweets. Perhaps they should relocate a dispensing facility to the toilets, like in Ely. Yes, Roland, I joined you in! Friday afternoon is presumably non-season-ticket holders - weekly commuters, or people going to London for the weekend. Well, the immense queues won't involve commuters with seasons, to be sure. Like I said, Friday afternoon was a new one to me. -- Colin Rosenstiel |
ITSO Travelcards
In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote: In message , at 08:49:22 on Sat, 15 Nov 2014, remarked: We are looking forward to their developments in Cambridge now of course. Indeed if you try to buy a ticket from the GTR web sites they all go to the Southern site. We are promised "The Key" real soon now. I wonder if we'll need to get a new The Key for Great Northern. I already have a Southern The Key and an Oxford Bus The Key, but I haven't yet had a chance to see if they are interoperable. Last time I tried not even the Southern The Key was usable at Victoria, although now it clearly must be. If they aren't interchangeable calling them "The" anything won't be too clever. -- Colin Rosenstiel |
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ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 23:52:00 on
Sat, 15 Nov 2014, Paul Corfield remarked: I currently possess a Southern "The Key", but alas am yet to use it. The main place I would kill for it to work is Gatwick Airport - just being able to pick up tickets at the gate avoiding the /dreadful/ queues at Gatwick would be fantastic (i.e. PAYG is not the requirement for me personally.) It seems to be a race though as to which will get to Gatwick first - The Key or Oyster... Surely the Southern Key *does* work at Gatwick? That's what I'd have thought. http://www.southernrailway.com/ticke...fares/the-key/ https://www.southernrailway.com/smar...s/routemap.pdf The one current weakness is that you cannot collect an online ordered ticket via a gate or validator inside the zonal area. It only works from Southern stations to the London area or other Southern stations. Still that would allow you to collect a pre-ordered ticket *at* Gatwick as you go through the gateline for travel back to Victoria. The "collect in London" facility is promised for "later this year" which I assume refers to 2014 but we'll see. The history of ITSO is peppered with announcements about things happening "later this year", which were still awaited 18 months later. -- Roland Perry |
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On 15/11/2014 23:52, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Sat, 15 Nov 2014 19:32:02 +0000 (UTC), Clank wrote: snip/ The "collect in London" facility is promised for "later this year" which I assume refers to 2014 but we'll see. I suspect that is because the Southern HOPS is not yet configured to send Actionlists to the TfL HOPS, or the TfL HOPS doesn't yet speak the same dialect of ITSOese. Don't you just love all the ITSO jargon - not! Kevin |
ITSO Travelcards
Paul Corfield wrote:
On Sat, 15 Nov 2014 19:32:02 +0000 (UTC), Clank wrote: I currently possess a Southern "The Key", but alas am yet to use it. The main place I would kill for it to work is Gatwick Airport - just being able to pick up tickets at the gate avoiding the /dreadful/ queues at Gatwick would be fantastic (i.e. PAYG is not the requirement for me personally.) It seems to be a race though as to which will get to Gatwick first - The Key or Oyster... Surely the Southern Key *does* work at Gatwick? http://www.southernrailway.com/ticke...fares/the-key/ https://www.southernrailway.com/smar...s/routemap.pdf Hmm, the text on that first link suggests I could only pick up a single ticket from Gatwick to a London terminal. If true, that's new in the last few weeks (and great news) - but still useless to me, as I need to pick up tickets from Gatwick to East Croydon. However, the map certainly doesn't imply that restriction, so it could be just poor wording. I'll try the journey planner... The one current weakness is that you cannot collect an online ordered ticket via a gate or validator inside the zonal area. It only works from Southern stations to the London area or other Southern stations If it works - for single/returns, not seasons - to the London *area*, then that is what is new, and I'll be very happy indeed! |
ITSO Travelcards
Clank wrote:
Paul Corfield wrote: On Sat, 15 Nov 2014 19:32:02 +0000 (UTC), Clank wrote: I currently possess a Southern "The Key", but alas am yet to use it. The main place I would kill for it to work is Gatwick Airport - just being able to pick up tickets at the gate avoiding the /dreadful/ queues at Gatwick would be fantastic (i.e. PAYG is not the requirement for me personally.) It seems to be a race though as to which will get to Gatwick first - The Key or Oyster... Surely the Southern Key *does* work at Gatwick? http://www.southernrailway.com/ticke...fares/the-key/ https://www.southernrailway.com/smar...s/routemap.pdf Hmm, the text on that first link suggests I could only pick up a single ticket from Gatwick to a London terminal. If true, that's new in the last few weeks (and great news) - but still useless to me, as I need to pick up tickets from Gatwick to East Croydon. However, the map certainly doesn't imply that restriction, so it could be just poor wording. I'll try the journey planner... Wahey, it looks like it works now - selecting "only tickets that can be loaded onto an ITSO smartcard" now actually shows some tickets. The Key won the race then :-). Anyone know when that changed? It's definitely recent. Someone needs to tell Southern's web folks, because they need to update the text on the site... |
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