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ITSO Travelcards
I just got an Epsom + Z1-6 Travelcard on my Southern Key card. It seems to operate gates as fast as Oyster, and the journey history shows up on the web page within half an hour, rather than next day for Oyster.
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ITSO Travelcards
In message , at
03:04:09 on Mon, 8 Sep 2014, Matthew Dickinson remarked: I just got an Epsom + Z1-6 Travelcard on my Southern Key card. It seems to operate gates as fast as Oyster, and the journey history shows up on the web page within half an hour, rather than next day for Oyster. Things seem to be looking up for ITSO. I think we might have been expecting the extension to Travelcards to go live at the earliest *next* week, after the Thameslink franchise changes hands and contactless-on-the-tube goes public. Meanwhile, I was in Edinburgh over the weekend and tried out my Scotrail ITSO card on one of the TVMs. It took *ages* to read the card (two to three seconds) but did then offer me a range of Scotrail destinations to buy a walk-up day ticket to. I didn't actually try buying one. -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
On 08.09.14 12:11, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 03:04:09 on Mon, 8 Sep 2014, Matthew Dickinson remarked: I just got an Epsom + Z1-6 Travelcard on my Southern Key card. It seems to operate gates as fast as Oyster, and the journey history shows up on the web page within half an hour, rather than next day for Oyster. Things seem to be looking up for ITSO. I think we might have been expecting the extension to Travelcards to go live at the earliest *next* week, after the Thameslink franchise changes hands and contactless-on-the-tube goes public. Meanwhile, I was in Edinburgh over the weekend and tried out my Scotrail ITSO card on one of the TVMs. It took *ages* to read the card (two to three seconds) but did then offer me a range of Scotrail destinations to buy a walk-up day ticket to. I didn't actually try buying one. I wonder when other agencies besides London will start to accept contactless. Besides London, IIRC, Bergen is the only other place to accept contactless as payment. |
ITSO Travelcards
On Monday, 8 September 2014 15:08:52 UTC+1, wrote:
On 08.09.14 12:11, Roland Perry wrote: In message , at 03:04:09 on Mon, 8 Sep 2014, Matthew Dickinson remarked: I just got an Epsom + Z1-6 Travelcard on my Southern Key card. It seems to operate gates as fast as Oyster, and the journey history shows up on the web page within half an hour, rather than next day for Oyster. Things seem to be looking up for ITSO. I think we might have been expecting the extension to Travelcards to go live at the earliest *next* week, after the Thameslink franchise changes hands and contactless-on-the-tube goes public. Meanwhile, I was in Edinburgh over the weekend and tried out my Scotrail ITSO card on one of the TVMs. It took *ages* to read the card (two to three seconds) but did then offer me a range of Scotrail destinations to buy a walk-up day ticket to. I didn't actually try buying one. I wonder when other agencies besides London will start to accept contactless. Besides London, IIRC, Bergen is the only other place to accept contactless as payment. TfGM have mentioned it. https://www.getmethere.com/web/tfgm_...e#a-card-types |
ITSO Travelcards
Did you have to sit down and rest due to the shock of it working? ;-) Thanks for the update btw. -- Paul C I was a little surprised that it all works. I wonder whether RPIs will be able to check the card.. |
ITSO Travelcards
In message , at
08:06:17 on Mon, 8 Sep 2014, Matthew Dickinson remarked: I wonder when other agencies besides London will start to accept contactless. Besides London, IIRC, Bergen is the only other place to accept contactless as payment. TfGM have mentioned it. https://www.getmethere.com/web/tfgm_...e#a-card-types Although as "coming soon(fsvo)": "In later phases of get me there, you'll be able to use your contactless bank card to travel on Metrolink by simply using it to touch in and out, without having to buy a travelcard or load on travel credit first." Contactless on the London Underground was in this state for quite a long time:( -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 17:06:32 on
Mon, 8 Sep 2014, Paul Corfield remarked: Did you have to sit down and rest due to the shock of it working? ;-) Thanks for the update btw. I was a little surprised that it all works. I wonder whether RPIs will be able to check the card.. hmm - very good question. I hadn't thought about that but these seismic changes in card acceptance [1] do present some interesting revenue protection issues for TfL and the TOCs. I'm not aware that new readers have been procured but I don't use rail services very often these days so may have missed some changes. One of the problems with one-TOC ITSO cards is their lack of interavailability with other operators on the same route which people take for granted with paper tickets. I haven't seen the T&C for using Contactless cards on TfL (and I bet neither have 99.99% of the people about to be using it). One way to do revenue protection (as long as the T&C allow it) is to swipe the card the same way an entry/exit barrier does, and then use the overnight back-office system to decide to either ignore it as redundant [when someone has been good] or use it to charge a penalty fare [when you suspect they haven't]. Inevitably there will be false positives [a penalty fare charged when not warranted] which should make a good story in the next day's Evening Standard. Assuming that anyone notices, which I'm sure TfL will be hoping they won't. -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
On 08/09/2014 22:09, Roland Perry wrote: [...] I was a little surprised that it all works. I wonder whether RPIs will be able to check the card.. hmm - very good question. I hadn't thought about that but these seismic changes in card acceptance [1] do present some interesting revenue protection issues for TfL and the TOCs. I'm not aware that new readers have been procured but I don't use rail services very often these days so may have missed some changes. One of the problems with one-TOC ITSO cards is their lack of interavailability with other operators on the same route which people take for granted with paper tickets. I haven't seen the T&C for using Contactless cards on TfL (and I bet neither have 99.99% of the people about to be using it). [...] The currently available T&Cs for contactless only cover bus travel: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/contactless-conditions-of-use.pdf [...] One way to do revenue protection (as long as the T&C allow it) is to swipe the card the same way an entry/exit barrier does, and then use the overnight back-office system to decide to either ignore it as redundant [when someone has been good] or use it to charge a penalty fare [when you suspect they haven't]. Inevitably there will be false positives [a penalty fare charged when not warranted] which should make a good story in the next day's Evening Standard. Assuming that anyone notices, which I'm sure TfL will be hoping they won't. |
ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 22:38:09 on Mon, 8 Sep 2014,
Mizter T remarked: I haven't seen the T&C for using Contactless cards on TfL (and I bet neither have 99.99% of the people about to be using it). [...] The currently available T&Cs for contactless only cover bus travel: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/contactless-conditions-of-use.pdf 2.2 is especially bizar "It is your responsibility to check the fare for your journey before you travel" Aren't buses flat-fare, and even if they weren't, what mechanisms exist for you to either enter, or confirm, a fare taken from a contactless card? Anyway, 2.5 covers the RPI angle: "You must be prepared to show your contactless payment card on every journey you make with it. You must let an authorised member of staff or a police officer inspect your contactless payment card at any time during your journey if asked to do so. You may be asked to touch your card on their portable card reader as part of their inspection." Important to remember (on a bus anyway) which card you touched in with! If you forget on the tube (when it goes live) then there's the whole 'unresolved journey' thing to contend with. I have a slight issue with the word "inspection", as I don't think the fact you made a particular contactless payment is stored on the card, so all they can really do (unless they have a way of downloading the information from the bus before starting to examine cards) is grab your data and then charge you a penalty fare or unresolved journey fee later. -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 10:23:21 on
Tue, 9 Sep 2014, Paul Corfield remarked: On Tue, 9 Sep 2014 09:28:46 +0100, Roland Perry wrote: I have a slight issue with the word "inspection", as I don't think the fact you made a particular contactless payment is stored on the card, so all they can really do (unless they have a way of downloading the information from the bus before starting to examine cards) is grab your data and then charge you a penalty fare or unresolved journey fee later. Inspectors request a print out from the ticket machine on boarding the bus. This has a list of any CPCs used on that trip which the inspectors then use to check against any cards presented by a passenger. A wonderfully manual way of implementing an e-ticket system! As bad as MegaTrain, where they check off your P@H tickets from a manual list at the gateline. I've only seen it happen once but that's the process as I understand it. I don't know if that has since been modified as the system has been upgraded in preparation for multi modal use. This Londonist article gives some clues about what happens to a CPC when touched in and also about new inspectors machines that can read bank cards. http://londonist.com/2014/08/contact...rt-some-more-a nswers.php "TfL is starting to issue inspectors with portable card readers which will be able to read the card’s recent journey history." Which contradicts what I thought I'd read about contactless card technology and the ability to store recent transactions on the card - or am I conflating that aspect with ITSO? Although one of the comments (to you in fact) says: "On Oyster the reader does write on to the card to prove you have touched in. On contactless cards (as far as I know) they cannot write to the card," -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
On Mon, Sep 08, 2014 at 10:09:46PM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
Inevitably there will be false positives [a penalty fare charged when not warranted] which should make a good story in the next day's Evening Standard. Assuming that anyone notices, which I'm sure TfL will be hoping they won't. I've been using Oyster PAYG instead of a paper travelcard for the last few months. I don't trust it, so check my journey history every morning. I find that it has screwed up, on average, once a week. And only once has it screwed up in my favour by completely missing a journey. Every other time it overcharged me. I can pretty much guarantee you that there will be *lots* of false positives. Probably more than with plain old Oyster, because if people are paying with their bank card they won't think it necessary to sign up for an account in an obscure corner of the TfL website and to check it religiously. -- David Cantrell | even more awesome than a panda-fur coat I hate baby seals. They get asked to all the best clubs. |
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In message , at 12:25:34
on Tue, 9 Sep 2014, David Cantrell remarked: Inevitably there will be false positives [a penalty fare charged when not warranted] which should make a good story in the next day's Evening Standard. Assuming that anyone notices, which I'm sure TfL will be hoping they won't. I've been using Oyster PAYG instead of a paper travelcard for the last few months. I don't trust it, so check my journey history every morning. I find that it has screwed up, on average, once a week. And only once has it screwed up in my favour by completely missing a journey. Every other time it overcharged me. You've confirmed what a lot of people only suspected. I can pretty much guarantee you that there will be *lots* of false positives. Probably more than with plain old Oyster, because if people are paying with their bank card they won't think it necessary to sign up for an account in an obscure corner of the TfL website and to check it religiously. And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for the fraction of a second it displays the number. I'm quite sure there's no such facility for the contactless cards. -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
David Cantrell wrote on 09 September 2014
12:25:34 ... On Mon, Sep 08, 2014 at 10:09:46PM +0100, Roland Perry wrote: Inevitably there will be false positives [a penalty fare charged when not warranted] which should make a good story in the next day's Evening Standard. Assuming that anyone notices, which I'm sure TfL will be hoping they won't. I've been using Oyster PAYG instead of a paper travelcard for the last few months. I don't trust it, so check my journey history every morning. I find that it has screwed up, on average, once a week. And only once has it screwed up in my favour by completely missing a journey. Every other time it overcharged me. Can you give some examples of how this happened? Did the system fail to register a touch-in/out, or has it miscalculated the fare for the time of day that you travelled, or what? -- Richard J. (to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address) |
ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 15:00:40 on
Tue, 9 Sep 2014, Paul Corfield remarked: The idea of somehow recording card holder name, card number and expiry date and then restrospectively applying some sort of charge to the account doesn't feel feasible to me. I can't think of a situation, other than via crime / fraud, where charges can be made to a bank account without the account holder having authorised this (at the time of transaction or granting authority to the bank when starting the account in respect of any charges / penalties they can levy). The T&C posted earlier specifically allow that (assuming that T&C that weren't brought to your specific attention have any force in law). 3.1 When you touch your contactless payment card on a yellow card reader, or a portable card reader held by staff, you are authorising TfL to charge the cost of your journey, including any unpaid fares, to your card account. -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
On Tue, 9 Sep 2014 13:00:11 +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for the fraction of a second it displays the number. I'm quite sure there's no such facility for the contactless cards. I'm a member of the contactless pilot and on my journey home this evening both gates gave me red lights while opening but the exit gate also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online version and that is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown on the gate. I'm not really sure how that happened. I'll have to look more closely at the displays next time and perhaps try and get a picture. |
ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 23:44:13 on
Tue, 9 Sep 2014, David Walters remarked: And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for the fraction of a second it displays the number. I'm quite sure there's no such facility for the contactless cards. I'm a member of the contactless pilot and on my journey home this evening both gates gave me red lights while opening What is the significance of a red light - it sounds like a "reject" (but never underestimate the ability of hardware designers to mix their metaphors). but the exit gate also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online version and that is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown on the gate. I'm not really sure how that happened. If the gates are online to the "back office" it could be possible to calculate and display the fare since the last 'touch', but this isn't the same as a running total for the day. I'll have to look more closely at the displays next time and perhaps try and get a picture. Wouldn't you need two people for that? -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
On Wed, 10 Sep 2014 08:14:18 +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 23:44:13 on Tue, 9 Sep 2014, David Walters remarked: And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for the fraction of a second it displays the number. I'm quite sure there's no such facility for the contactless cards. I'm a member of the contactless pilot and on my journey home this evening both gates gave me red lights while opening What is the significance of a red light - it sounds like a "reject" (but never underestimate the ability of hardware designers to mix their metaphors). It is a reject and I wouldn't expect the gates to open with a red light, rather than green, but they did. I thought I'd had a red light about a week ago but hadn't been sure but last night I'm fairly sure that is what happened. I was using wide gates that were set for entry and exit and seem to alternate between directions every second or so and perhaps the red light was due to the card read time being slow and it switching directions while reading but then opening because the read was successful? but the exit gate also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online version and that is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown on the gate. I'm not really sure how that happened. If the gates are online to the "back office" it could be possible to calculate and display the fare since the last 'touch', but this isn't the same as a running total for the day. I think another number was displayed in the space I would expect to see remaining Oyster balance but I didn't get a proper look and was surprised to see anything at all. The journey was unusual for me as I normally start or end at a station without gates and use a validator. I did that this morning and the exit gate didn't display a fare. I'll have to look more closely at the displays next time and perhaps try and get a picture. Wouldn't you need two people for that? I just need two hands, not to be carrying anything and the station to be not too busy. |
ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 10:12:00 on
Wed, 10 Sep 2014, Paul Corfield remarked: And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for the fraction of a second it displays the number. I'm quite sure there's no such facility for the contactless cards. I'm a member of the contactless pilot and on my journey home this evening both gates gave me red lights while opening but the exit gate also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online version and that is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown on the gate. I'm not really sure how that happened. I'll have to look more closely at the displays next time and perhaps try and get a picture. Hmmm interesting. I wonder if TfL have responded to the trial feedback about people not liking the absence of the fare to the paid being shown on the exit gate display. Once you take into account any OSIs that might be in play for the current journey, then it becomes more complicated than just a case of "where did you last touch in, and here's the single fare from there to here". It suggests (I'll put it no more strongly than that) that something is written to the bank card. I've been corresponding today with an acquaintance who is very much into a range of Card technology (and is a 'Member of ITSO' - whatever that implies) and he assures me that nothing can be written to a CPC (Contactless Payment Card). On the other hand he says that ITSO cards *are* designed to be read, and written back to, whenever they are 'touched', to do things like mark a ticket it's carrying as 'active' or 'expired'. I cannot see how else an exit gate could calculate and display a fare within the few hundred millisecond processing time parameter. I can't see there being contact with the "back room" system in that time parameter. And a displayed fare for just "the current journey" won't alert you to issues with unresolved journeys earlier in the day, so perhaps it should really be your "fare for everything so far today", but that would require the back-office to run its reconciliation/capping program every time someone touches out. And how would it deal with bus trips where the "back room" won't have that information yet. -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 10:39:28AM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 10:23:21 on Tue, 9 Sep 2014, Paul Corfield remarked: Inspectors request a print out from the ticket machine on boarding the bus. This has a list of any CPCs used on that trip which the inspectors then use to check against any cards presented by a passenger. A wonderfully manual way of implementing an e-ticket system! It's not a particularly stupid way of doing occasional ticket inspections. As bad as MegaTrain, where they check off your P@H tickets from a manual list at the gateline. No, it's completely different. What you describe for Megatrain (who dat?) sounds like something they do all the time, for all journeys. What Mr. Corfield describes is something that will happen occasionally, for a tiny minority of journeys. "TfL is starting to issue inspectors with portable card readers which will be able to read the card???s recent journey history." Which contradicts what I thought I'd read about contactless card technology and the ability to store recent transactions on the card ... That could be a poor description of a device that reads the card's number from the card and checks that it has been used to pay for a fare on that bus. -- David Cantrell | London Perl Mongers Deputy Chief Heretic Are you feeling bored? depressed? slowed down? Evil Scientists may be manipulating the speed of light in your vicinity. Buy our patented instructional video to find out how, and maybe YOU can stop THEM |
ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 12:05:19
on Wed, 10 Sep 2014, David Cantrell remarked: "TfL is starting to issue inspectors with portable card readers which will be able to read the card???s recent journey history." Which contradicts what I thought I'd read about contactless card technology and the ability to store recent transactions on the card ... That could be a poor description of a device that reads the card's number from the card and checks that it has been used to pay for a fare on that bus. That makes it sound like the device can read the paper printout too, so it has something to compare the cards with :) -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 01:00:11PM +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 12:25:34 on Tue, 9 Sep 2014, David Cantrell remarked: I've been using Oyster PAYG instead of a paper travelcard for the last few months. I don't trust it, so check my journey history every morning. I find that it has screwed up, on average, once a week. And only once has it screwed up in my favour by completely missing a journey. Every other time it overcharged me. You've confirmed what a lot of people only suspected. I thought it was widely known. It's certainly come up in Stuff at city hall. I was particularly impressed by the time I touched out at Victoria (District line), the gates failed to open, but it registered the touch out anyway and the gate refused to recognise me trying again. The gate next door did though, and despite that gate line having been exit only for the last twenty years, it registered a touch *in* when it let me out. My journey history then has another touch in two minutes later at the BR station. So it goes ... 18:33: touch in at Aldgate East 18:53: touch out at Victoria (district line) 18:54: touch in at Victoria (exit-only gateline; no subsequent touch out) 18:56: touch in at Victoria BR 19:25: touch out at Thornton Heath You have to be a really special kind of stupid to charge me for three trips there, but they did. You have to be a really special kind of stupid to not flag supposed concurrent journeys on the same card for some kind of review. I can pretty much guarantee you that there will be *lots* of false positives. Probably more than with plain old Oyster, because if people are paying with their bank card they won't think it necessary to sign up for an account in an obscure corner of the TfL website and to check it religiously. And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for the fraction of a second it displays the number. And if you know what the various numbers mean, and if you can see them anyway, and if you remember what your balance is, and if you can hold the Byzantine fare structure in your head and so extract meaning from the random numbers. In good Oystery news, they appear to have finally learned how to make a website properly, and the journey history now doesn't require that you use Firefox. -- David Cantrell | Hero of the Information Age The voices said it's a good day to clean my weapons |
ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 11:34:18 on
Wed, 10 Sep 2014, David Walters remarked: but the exit gate also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online version and that is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown on the gate. I'm not really sure how that happened. If the gates are online to the "back office" it could be possible to calculate and display the fare since the last 'touch', but this isn't the same as a running total for the day. I think another number What sort of number - a sum of money, error message... was displayed in the space I would expect to see remaining Oyster balance Hold on - are there two places at a gate that numbers are displayed, the one you first mentioned and also the "Oyster balance space"? but I didn't get a proper look and was surprised to see anything at all. -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 01:36:34PM +0100, Richard J. wrote:
David Cantrell wrote on 09 September 2014 I've been using Oyster PAYG instead of a paper travelcard for the last few months. I don't trust it, so check my journey history every morning. I find that it has screwed up, on average, once a week. And only once has it screwed up in my favour by completely missing a journey. Every other time it overcharged me. Can you give some examples of how this happened? Did the system fail to register a touch-in/out It's mostly that - failing to register when the gates are either locked open because there are no staff on duty, or failing to register but opening anyway. or has it miscalculated the fare for the time of day that you travelled, or what? I have no idea. Understanding the fare structure requires an advanced degree in non-Euclidean economics. It does appear to be fairly consistent in what it charges me provided that it correctly registers my touches in and out though. The one thing that ****es me off is that I will often touch in at Thornton Heath a minute or so before the 09:30 cut-off for off-peak fares, but the next train doesn't leave until after the cut-off. Therefore I think I should be charged at the off-peak rate. It really shouldn't be difficult for a billing system computer to look at a damned timetable. However, AIUI this particular bit of over-charging is deliberate and it's performing as advertised. -- David Cantrell | A machine for turning tea into grumpiness One person can change the world, but most of the time they shouldn't -- Marge Simpson |
ITSO Travelcards
On Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:27:23 +0100, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:34:18 on Wed, 10 Sep 2014, David Walters remarked: but the exit gate also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online version and that is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown on the gate. I'm not really sure how that happened. If the gates are online to the "back office" it could be possible to calculate and display the fare since the last 'touch', but this isn't the same as a running total for the day. I think another number What sort of number - a sum of money, error message... Perhaps a sum of money but I'm really not sure. was displayed in the space I would expect to see remaining Oyster balance Hold on - are there two places at a gate that numbers are displayed, the one you first mentioned and also the "Oyster balance space"? IIRC the Oyster pad display or gate display, depending on the age of the gate, shows something like EXIT on the first line and your balance in brackets at the start of the second line and the fare for the journey at the end of the second line. http://www.freetoursbyfoot.com/wp-co...2/Barriers.jpg shows a gate on exit. The detail isn't there to read the numbers but there are two shown. |
ITSO Travelcards
On Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:31:42 +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
The one thing that ****es me off is that I will often touch in at Thornton Heath a minute or so before the 09:30 cut-off for off-peak fares, but the next train doesn't leave until after the cut-off. Therefore I think I should be charged at the off-peak rate. That's not my experience. I used to catch a 0926 train from Oakleigh Park which was frequently a few minutes late. There are validators on the platform and as long as I touched in at 0927 or later I would pay an off-peak fare. That train has now been re-timed and is scheduled to depart at 0925 which it usually does IME so I've ended up paying more. |
ITSO Travelcards
"Roland Perry" wrote , at 12:05:19 on Wed, 10 Sep 2014, David Cantrell remarked: "TfL is starting to issue inspectors with portable card readers which will be able to read the card???s recent journey history." Which contradicts what I thought I'd read about contactless card technology and the ability to store recent transactions on the card That could be a poor description of a device that reads the card's number from the card and checks that it has been used to pay for a fare on that bus. That makes it sound like the device can read the paper printout too, so it has something to compare the cards with :) I assume that instead of or as well as the paper printout a digital copy can be be sent to an inspector's portable device. -- -- Mike D |
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In message , at 17:29:51 on Wed, 10
Sep 2014, Michael R N Dolbear remarked: "TfL is starting to issue inspectors with portable card readers which will be able to read the card???s recent journey history." Which contradicts what I thought I'd read about contactless card technology and the ability to store recent transactions on the card That could be a poor description of a device that reads the card's number from the card and checks that it has been used to pay for a fare on that bus. That makes it sound like the device can read the paper printout too, so it has something to compare the cards with :) I assume that instead of or as well as the paper printout a digital copy can be be sent to an inspector's portable device. That sounds like a bigger modification to the bus terminals than just printing out a slip. -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
"Roland Perry" wrote In message , at 17:29:51 on Wed, 10 Sep 2014, Michael R N Dolbear remarked: "TfL is starting to issue inspectors with portable card readers which will be able to read the card???s recent journey history." [...] I assume that instead of or as well as the paper printout a digital copy can be be sent to an inspector's portable device. That sounds like a bigger modification to the bus terminals than just printing out a slip. Both the routine to print (as the 'Oyster negative' reminder) and the routine to write to an external 'drive' (at end of day) must already be present so the work would be just to organise and send in both cases. Printing more than one page/ticket could be a bigger enhancement if not already allowed for. -- Mike D |
ITSO Travelcards
On 10/09/2014 10:12, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Tue, 9 Sep 2014 23:44:13 +0100, David Walters wrote: On Tue, 9 Sep 2014 13:00:11 +0100, Roland Perry wrote: And with Oyster there's at least the chance that you can see your balance disappearing, if you know exactly where to look on a gate for the fraction of a second it displays the number. I'm quite sure there's no such facility for the contactless cards. I'm a member of the contactless pilot and on my journey home this evening both gates gave me red lights while opening but the exit gate also displayed my fare. I've just checked the online version and that is matching what I expected to pay and what was shown on the gate. I'm not really sure how that happened. I'll have to look more closely at the displays next time and perhaps try and get a picture. Hmmm interesting. I wonder if TfL have responded to the trial feedback about people not liking the absence of the fare to the paid being shown on the exit gate display. It suggests (I'll put it no more strongly than that) that something is written to the bank card. I cannot see how else an exit gate could calculate and display a fare within the few hundred millisecond processing time parameter. I can't see there being contact with the "back room" system in that time parameter. Paul, the current generation of CPC (aka EMV) cards can't be written to by the 'transit application' in the gate or validator, but they are updated by the reader. They contain a transaction counter and a cumulative sum recording the contactless transactions. If either of these reach a set threhold then the card will require a Chip'n'PIN transaction so that it can go online and ge tthe counters reset. This is a design feature to minimise some of the risks if the card is lost or stolen. If all you do is buy a coffee at Starbucks (or whatever), then the occasional Chip'n'PIN operation won't be a problem. IN the transit world I'm not 100% sure whether the card can go on for ever, or whether you will need to buy a coffee every so often. Future generations of EMV cards will have 'transit sectors' so that they can carry tranit-related data. With ITSO cards there is a lot of capability - depending on the technical product (IPE in ITSO speak) - to store data on the card. A Stroed Travel Rights IPE (TYP 2) is very like an Oyster APYG, and can maintain a number of counters and accumlators on the card. Other IPE TYPs are used for singles/returns and season/period products. But there does seem to be a move at present to use the card - whether EMV or ITSO - as just an ;entitlement to travel' token, with the cost of travel being worked out in a commercial back office after the travel has taken place. I could go on and on about this, so if you have any more specific questions I'd be happy to take them via private email. Time to get off my hobby horse... Kevin |
ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 20:32:42 on Wed, 10 Sep
2014, Kevin Ayton remarked: the current generation of CPC (aka EMV) cards can't be written to by the 'transit application' in the gate or validator, but they are updated by the reader. They contain a transaction counter and a cumulative sum recording the contactless transactions. But neither of these have any details about the individual transactions. If either of these reach a set threhold then the card will require a Chip'n'PIN transaction so that it can go online and ge tthe counters reset. This is a design feature to minimise some of the risks if the card is lost or stolen. If all you do is buy a coffee at Starbucks (or whatever), then the occasional Chip'n'PIN operation won't be a problem. IN the transit world I'm not 100% sure whether the card can go on for ever, or whether you will need to buy a coffee every so often. My understanding is that transit operators such as TfL have managed to negotiate an exemption (possibly at their own risk, but let's face it a blagged journey on a tube train costs them nothing, a blagged Starbucks coffee costs the franchisee real money). I don't know exactly how this exemption has been implemented, but I wouldn't be surprised if all TfL readers were excluded from the requirement to increment either of the two counters mentioned. Clearly, there's no possibility of anyone typing in a PIN. If a card is reported (or maybe even suspected by usage patterns) to have been stolen, then TfL will block it from being used any more by having hot-lists at the gates. We know they do this because of the way they describe what happens if you travel on a CPC card whose previous day's journeys have run up a "bad debt" because the most recent overnight funds transfer was refused by the bank. -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
On 10/09/2014 14:44, David Walters wrote: On Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:31:42 +0100, David Cantrell wrote: The one thing that ****es me off is that I will often touch in at Thornton Heath a minute or so before the 09:30 cut-off for off-peak fares, but the next train doesn't leave until after the cut-off. Therefore I think I should be charged at the off-peak rate. That's not my experience. I used to catch a 0926 train from Oakleigh Park which was frequently a few minutes late. There are validators on the platform and as long as I touched in at 0927 or later I would pay an off-peak fare. Yep, there's a leeway of I think 3 minutes in favour of the punter - so an 0927 touch-in should get you an off-peak fare. That train has now been re-timed and is scheduled to depart at 0925 which it usually does IME so I've ended up paying more. |
ITSO Travelcards
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ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 23:06:11 on
Wed, 10 Sep 2014, Paul Corfield remarked: I'm much less informed about the CPC stuff. I understand the issue of requiring PIN validation after so many "wave and pay" ones. I thought TfL had negotiated a way round this but again I can't point to anything in detail. Building on my posting from yesterday, I think we know that TfL CPC transactions are all "zero pence", so that would mean the CPC's internal "money spent since the last PIN transaction" counter won't be incrementing each time. All we'd need then is for, either built in by default, or as a special TfL feature, for the "number of waves" counter not to increment either when it sees a zero-value transaction or a TfL transaction. Perhaps such functionality would be inherent in TfL's readers. Of course, the most recent conventional transaction might have been the one which tripped the counters into the state of "ask for a PIN next time", but that can't be done at a TfL gate so postponing it for the next conventional transaction must be inherent in the design. -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
On Monday, 8 September 2014 11:04:09 UTC+1, Matthew Dickinson wrote:
I just got an Epsom + Z1-6 Travelcard on my Southern Key card. It seems to operate gates as fast as Oyster, and the journey history shows up on the web page within half an hour, rather than next day for Oyster. I've travelled around with it quite a bit in the last few days. The only problem I've had is the gateline at St Pancras Low Level not recognising it. |
ITSO Travelcards
In message , at 17:54:57 on
Fri, 12 Sep 2014, Paul Corfield remarked: I just got an Epsom + Z1-6 Travelcard on my Southern Key card. It seems to operate gates as fast as Oyster, and the journey history shows up on the web page within half an hour, rather than next day for Oyster. I've travelled around with it quite a bit in the last few days. The only problem I've had is the gateline at St Pancras Low Level not recognising it. Oh well Govia can get cracking with fixing that when they take over at 0200 on Sunday! it's rather odd that a Zone 1 gateline should not recognise a valid Travelcard product. I wonder if it was down to an ITSO card not being recognised in which it's possibly hardware or software or both. Could be something to do with the multiple domestic gate-lines within the complex (unless some are combined there are eight: SPILL, MML, Hi-Speed, East Coast, FCC [rip], Northern, Western and Classic tube halls). Perhaps they haven't properly fettled all of them? -- Roland Perry |
ITSO Travelcards
On Friday, 12 September 2014 18:09:19 UTC+1, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 17:54:57 on Fri, 12 Sep 2014, Paul Corfield remarked: I just got an Epsom + Z1-6 Travelcard on my Southern Key card. It seems to operate gates as fast as Oyster, and the journey history shows up on the web page within half an hour, rather than next day for Oyster. I've travelled around with it quite a bit in the last few days. The only problem I've had is the gateline at St Pancras Low Level not recognising it. Oh well Govia can get cracking with fixing that when they take over at 0200 on Sunday! it's rather odd that a Zone 1 gateline should not recognise a valid Travelcard product. I wonder if it was down to an ITSO card not being recognised in which it's possibly hardware or software or both. Could be something to do with the multiple domestic gate-lines within the complex (unless some are combined there are eight: SPILL, MML, Hi-Speed, East Coast, FCC [rip], Northern, Western and Classic tube halls). Perhaps they haven't properly fettled all of them? -- Roland Perry The error code I got was 57, which basically means out of zone. The High Speed gateline doesn't have any card readers installed, and I'm not sure whether the ITSO only EMT gateline would be considered to be in a Travelcard zone. |
ITSO Travelcards
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ITSO Travelcards
"Matthew Dickinson" wrote ... On Monday, 8 September 2014 11:04:09 UTC+1, Matthew Dickinson wrote: I just got an Epsom + Z1-6 Travelcard on my Southern Key card. It seems to operate gates as fast as Oyster, and the journey history shows up on the web page within half an hour, rather than next day for Oyster. I've travelled around with it quite a bit in the last few days. The only problem I've had is the gateline at St Pancras Low Level not recognising it. Have you tried it on a TfL bus or Tramlink reader? -- Mike D |
ITSO Travelcards
TfL buses work fine. The ETM flashes up ITSO card. I haven't tried Tramlink yet.
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ITSO Travelcards
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