Cubic to implement national ticketing solution

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › Cubic to implement national ticketing solution

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eracode

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#2986031 22-Oct-2022 11:34

Obraik:

… if you're an infrequent user like I was, then after 60 days that gets refunded back to your bank card if you don't use it.

I don’t think that’s correct. After reimbursement by AT for series of errors they made, I ended up with a fairly large credit balance on my Gold AT Hop card. Because I am over 65, I get pretty much free transport on AT and I am an infrequent user, so there was no way I was ever going to use up the credit.

I wanted the money back and the only way I could do that was to formally cancel my card and apply, all in writing, for the credit balance to be put into my bank account. This was way longer than 60 days after I had last used my card - more like a year.

The whole process, once I had initiated it, took them over a month complete. Then I had get a new Gold AT card with a more modest credit balance on it.

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#2986032 22-Oct-2022 11:38

The new service will make it easier for tourists, international and domestic. It was frustrating a few years ago not being able to get a card at Christchurch airport and havyto pay the higher cash fare. Even when airports do have cards, extra time is required.

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#2986033 22-Oct-2022 11:40

eracode:
Obraik:

… if you're an infrequent user like I was, then after 60 days that gets refunded back to your bank card if you don't use it.

I don’t think that’s correct. After reimbursement by AT for series of errors they made, I ended up with a fairly large credit balance on my Gold AT Hop card. Because I am over 65, I get pretty much free transport on AT and I am an infrequent user, so there was no way I was ever going to use up the credit.

I wanted the money back and the only way I could do that was to formally cancel my card and apply, all in writing, for the credit balance to be put into my bank account. This was way longer than 60 days after I had last used my card - more like a year.

The whole process, once I had initiated it, took them over a month complete. Then I had get a new Gold AT card with a more modest credit balance on it.

60 days if you haven’t tagged on to have the credit applied to your card.

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#2986036 22-Oct-2022 12:08

The density thing is a bit of a distraction. Lots of NZ cities have enough density to run great public transport.

And if we take a look a history, for example, Auckland, used to do exactly that (before we decided to rip out the tram lines and build motorways).

Auckland's Historic PT Patronage - Greater Auckland

On ticketing. One key thing to note is that in 2010 the NZTA put in a policy targeting 50% farebox recovery ratio by 2018. So free public transport was essentially banned, even if a city wanted to fund it. So we needed a payment system.

Can only speak to Auckland, but here is a little recent history:

- Around 2007, each public transport operator had is's own ticketing system (and all accepted cash, and gave change). The various bus companies all painted their buses in their own colors. I recall that NZ bus (one of the bigger Auckland bus operators) had an IC chip card that could be used in place of cash.

- NZ bus upgraded it's IC card system to snapper RFID cards. Much faster system, and they had grand hopes it would be adopted as the city wide system they knew was going to be rolled out in a couple of years (given the advantage of being a defacto incumbent). This card were branded as "hop" in a deal with Auckland transport in a hope that they could just expand snapper rather than swap to a new system.

- Sadly something was unworkable with the snapper hop cars (depicted left below), I am unsure if it was technical or commercial. And as such Auckland transport made the decision to boot them out, and roll out its own hop card developed via a $9m contract with Thales. (Pictured right below).

New ticketing card gave consistency over all modes and allowed for more integrated fair policy. Did have limitations (basically, the bus readers are offline, and unlike snapper, you couldn't use a personal NFC writer to do online top up's.). As such if one wanted to do an online top up, it needed to be done by 11pm? the night before, so it could be pushed to all the buses before they left the deports (or top up wound need to be done at a terminal which would write it to the card). Also there is some issue where if an auto top up fails, the card gets permanently black listed, and you need to buy a new one.

There was a view that the back end of the AT hop card could become the national card, but no other cities chose to adopt it (and wellington went with snapper which Auckland turned up its nose at).

The timing of the Thales project (2010 - 2012 I think) was a little problematic. Meant Auckland had a brand spanking new ticketing system, just as technologies like tap and go credit card's and NFC built into phones started to become mainstream.

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#2986038 22-Oct-2022 12:18

Snapper had (has) some strange quirks. Firstly when it was rolled out you could use a phone as your card but it had to be a 2D card and only on certain model Android phones. Not sure if that is a thing now. Next since it's a stored value card you can top up from any Android phone with NFC but not iPhone. That might have been one of the reasons AT rejected it but then I have ridden AT enough to know.

When I was in London in 2019 I was all expecting to have to get a travel card but then found out they suppoed Google Pay so I just used my phone for the entire time I was in London. That so frictionless. That is what they are trying to achieve here but the budget is supposed to bs $1B over the life of the project and the first cab off the rank isn't until 2024. If Transport Authority implement this the same way they did Transmission Gully I would not expect any working system this decade :-(

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#2986786 23-Oct-2022 12:21

I believe the primary reason AT rejected further expansion of the Snapper-Hop is that Snapper (a private company) controlled the float (balances on people’s cards) and owned the technology.

Auckland Transport (rightfully) wished to retain ownership and control of the balances, and be able to earn interest etc off of them, and so that was a requirement of Auckland’s system which Snapped-Hop is fundamentally incompatible with. There was also an arguable conflict in that Snapper and NZ Bus (a large provider of many which run bus services for AT) were owned by Infratil and very closely related. This would give NZ Bus access to data such as ridership which commercially disadvantaged their competitors.

In any cases, the Thales-Hop currently in use has the ability to support open loop (use of credit cards and payWave as the token), it just requires some additional development. AT have not pursued this because of Project NEXT - there is no point investing further in the Thales-Hop product beyond maintenance if it is destined for the scrap heap. Which is a shame for Aucklanders now.

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#2986955 23-Oct-2022 18:42

antonknee: I believe the primary reason AT rejected further expansion of the Snapper-Hop is that Snapper (a private company) controlled the float (balances on people’s cards) and owned the technology.

Auckland Transport (rightfully) wished to retain ownership and control of the balances, and be able to earn interest etc off of them, and so that was a requirement of Auckland’s system which Snapped-Hop is fundamentally incompatible with. There was also an arguable conflict in that Snapper and NZ Bus (a large provider of many which run bus services for AT) were owned by Infratil and very closely related. This would give NZ Bus access to data such as ridership which commercially disadvantaged their competitors.

In any cases, the Thales-Hop currently in use has the ability to support open loop (use of credit cards and payWave as the token), it just requires some additional development. AT have not pursued this because of Project NEXT - there is no point investing further in the Thales-Hop product beyond maintenance if it is destined for the scrap heap. Which is a shame for Aucklanders now.

I thought Snapper was a stored value card since I can read the balance off the card with a phone that is not Internet connected. I top the card with my account which has my credit card assigned to it but I don't think Snapper can use my balance. Happy to be corrected.

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wellygary

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#2986972 23-Oct-2022 19:22

lchiu7:

I thought Snapper was a stored value card since I can read the balance off the card with a phone that is not Internet connected. I top the card with my account which has my credit card assigned to it but I don't think Snapper can use my balance. Happy to be corrected.

When you transfer your $$$ to top up the card, the actual funds move to another physical bank account, ( not sure if this is in the name of the regional council or Snapper, but that is immaterial) - your card is "credited" with a balance equal to the real money moved from your account.

As you use you card, the real dollars (this is known as the float) in the bank account are moved to eventually pay the bus/rail operators, ( this is not necessarily done in real time, but at the end of the week or month a reconciliation is run and funds are transferred to the appropriate company for the services provided.)

What is on your card is equivalent to the real dollars you are owned by the "float" . but it is certainly not operated as 100,000s of individual accounts with real cash, just a proxy on your card

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#2987110 24-Oct-2022 11:20

wellygary:

lchiu7:

I thought Snapper was a stored value card since I can read the balance off the card with a phone that is not Internet connected. I top the card with my account which has my credit card assigned to it but I don't think Snapper can use my balance. Happy to be corrected.

When you transfer your $$$ to top up the card, the actual funds move to another physical bank account, ( not sure if this is in the name of the regional council or Snapper, but that is immaterial) - your card is "credited" with a balance equal to the real money moved from your account.

As you use you card, the real dollars (this is known as the float) in the bank account are moved to eventually pay the bus/rail operators, ( this is not necessarily done in real time, but at the end of the week or month a reconciliation is run and funds are transferred to the appropriate company for the services provided.)

What is on your card is equivalent to the real dollars you are owned by the "float" . but it is certainly not operated as 100,000s of individual accounts with real cash, just a proxy on your card

OK understood. I guess that's why the operator wants to hold the funds. That would not occur of course with a scheme card.

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#2987307 24-Oct-2022 12:11

cshwone:

................... so the government announces a unified public transport payment system.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/130221756/major-change-coming-to-how-kiwis-pay-for-public-transport

I think I have read about "public transport" somewhere....

As jazz musician the late George Melly said in an interview on reaching 65 years old: "I received my bus pass in the post recently - whatever a "bus" is."

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#2987315 24-Oct-2022 13:21

Geektastic:

I think I have read about "public transport" somewhere....

As jazz musician the late George Melly said in an interview on reaching 65 years old: "I received my bus pass in the post recently - whatever a "bus" is."

To paraphrase a line from the "Darkest Hour"

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#2987362 24-Oct-2022 17:29

xpd:

Won't happen in Auckland.

AT don't even follow their own rules, so don't see them following anyone elses.

Unless they're going to extend the contract they have until 2026 to I guess they're not under much pressure to get it done before the contract ends. I'm surprised that the government just didn't buy Snapper off Infratil and run it has a state owned enterprise then deploy it nationwide.

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#2987661 25-Oct-2022 11:59

Was going to take the bus to work as I usually do (6:50 bus in Welly) and thought I would check the bus. Luckily the bis had been cancelled as was the 7:15 the next bus being 7:30. As you can imagine it was SRO and in fact after cramming all of us on, it did not stop anymore to pick up passengers.

The point is, rather than spending all this money on a national ticketing system, the benefits from which are not that clear, how about spending that money on bus driver salaries so more people are attracted to the job? I think passengers would prefer that the bus service is reliable and frequent than know their Snapper card (or whatever) works in ChCh or in Auckland

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