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Revenue Protection Inspectors
Paul Corfield wrote:
On Sun, 27 May 2007 22:12:25 -0400, David of Broadway wrote: Neil Williams wrote: On Sun, 27 May 2007 10:59:12 +0100, traveller wrote: I boarded a London Bus with an Oyster Card that had insufficient credit for the journey. I had used it twice previously during the day and was unaware that the credit was running low. This is either a troll or a person who did not check for the bleep and green light on boarding. Probably the latter. I doubt everybody instinctively knows to wait for a bleep and a green light. I think almost everyone knows that the machine beeps and the lights change. Pre-pay users tend to squint at the machine display the see their total - I still think the displays are appalling in this respect. People who ride the bus every day probably are as you describe. People who ride the bus occasionally probably are not. Tourists certainly are not. (And we also have terrible displays in New York -- they only display a single line at a time, so people stand and wait around to see the balance remaining or the expiration date while the rest of the crowd is still waiting outside in the rain.) For those of us who are colour blind the lights are useless given that there is only one small "pinhole" light that changes colour. The old trial on route 212 had a clear display and obvious illuminated segments, like a traffic light, which were lit depending on the card status. At least then the relative position of the lights was an aid to those who are colour blind. Interesting point. I don't think we have colo(u)red lights -- we have the text display and a beep or boop. We also have a display mounted on the wall /behind/ the driver (out of view to both the driver and the boarding passenger) indicating the type of fare paid; this is nicknamed the beakie box and is used by supervisors to ensure that the driver is applying the correct fares. Seeing as this wasn't a bendy-bus, why didn't the driver point out traveller's error right away? That's what the drivers here do when the farebox gives a boop instead of a beep. There is an awful lot of inconsistent behaviour from drivers coupled with equipment that even now performs in a rather variable fashion. Although total reader failures seem to be lower than before they still happen and drivers simply have to wave people on. Other readers misread some cards but not all - this again can result in "wave on" syndrome or else passengers trying their cards 3-4 times. The height at which readers recognise cards also varies which I find most odd - this should be consistently set. I saw someone have to press their card almost inside the reader before it read the card. Goodness knows what was going on there. The other remaining issue is the small minority of passengers who have no intention of paying and board with an empty PAYG card and then allege card failure, reader failure, a sob story of having no money to pay etc and then hoping the driver is in "wave on" mode. While I sympathise with the drivers when the kit completely fails I think there is a little too much discretion shown by some drivers in the more marginal "failure" modes. The lack of clarity from TfL was to what is or is not to be done with failed equipment or failed cards does not help. In Hong Kong it is clear - a failed reader (rare these days) means you pay cash on the bus or wait for the next one. Cards can be replaced at MTR stations if your card has failed otherwise a defective gate (a very rare occurrence) is taken out of service. TfL really needs to get kit reliability sorted once and for all and also to publish some clear rules on what happens when the system does fail. At present it is open to too much interpretation and people taking a punt on fare evasion as a result. IMO, the Hong Kong policy is overly strict. The policy in New York is that if a bus farebox is broken -- either the MetroCard slot or the coin slot -- then everybody boards for free, at least until the end of the run, when (IINM) a determination is made whether to keep the bus in service or to swap it with a bus with a working farebox. If the farebox itself is working but a MetroCard isn't, then, officially, the customer is given an envelope (to mail in the card for a replacement or refund) and is expected to pay by some other means (cash or a different MetroCard); in practice, however, most drivers will simply allow the customer to board. (Not so on the subway! I've had MetroCards die prematurely on several occasions -- on one of those occasions it had been killed by an errant bus farebox that morning! -- and I have always been required to use another card to enter the system.) -- David of Broadway New York, NY, USA |
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Revenue Protection Inspectors
On Mon, 28 May 2007 09:59:11 -0400, David of Broadway
wrote: Paul Corfield wrote: For those of us who are colour blind the lights are useless given that there is only one small "pinhole" light that changes colour. The old trial on route 212 had a clear display and obvious illuminated segments, like a traffic light, which were lit depending on the card status. At least then the relative position of the lights was an aid to those who are colour blind. Interesting point. I don't think we have colo(u)red lights -- we have the text display and a beep or boop. I've not noticed any coloured lights on the subway thus far - just a dot matrix display that says "GO" when you can go. (I'm yet to discover what it says when you can't go, and also yet to take a bus. But I'm here for a few more days yet, so I'll keep 'em peeled...) |
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