Auckland's new HOP bus card and Snapper: What's the difference?

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porche20002

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#80971 6-Apr-2011 21:13

Hi all,

Saw the add for HOP in the paper today and was wondering, is the same as a snapper card and if so, can i use a snapper card to pay for bus fares instead of a hop card? I'm pretty sure it's all the same platform but I'm not sure and their website doesn't help either.

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Chris

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#456108 6-Apr-2011 21:18

Then there is the 'new' thales card that the ferry and trains will use 'in the future'.
Not sure which one is going to be the 'integrated' system.
They have made what should be a simple product complicated.....

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porche20002

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#456110 6-Apr-2011 21:20

Agree with you. It's just too confusing.
To be honest, I'm just hoping for them to hurry up on the rail upgrade! I'm mean, who sill has a train conductor going round clipping tickets?!

It's a real hassle for us students.

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Chris

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LennonNZ

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#456113 6-Apr-2011 21:23

Hmm..

http://www.aucklandtrains.co.nz/2011/04/04/hop-integrated-ticketing-launched/

looks like hop cards are snapper cards just rebadged

timmmay

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#456116 6-Apr-2011 21:25

To be honest, I'm just hoping for them to hurry up on the rail upgrade! I'm mean, who sill has a train conductor going round clipping tickets?!

It's a real hassle for us students.

Wellington does, tens of thousands of people take the trains here. Some days the trains are so full they can't walk down the aisle to get tickets.

Why is it a hassle for students to have tickets clipped?

porche20002

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#456118 6-Apr-2011 21:29

*WARNING: RANT*

Sorry what I meant was that it's not more of a hassle especially for students but we tend to take the train twice a day so we have to deal with the conductor walking round so you generally have your wallet out and your waiting for the guy to come round. Plus we tend to keep losing the 10 ride tickets.

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Chris

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timmmay

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#456119 6-Apr-2011 21:31

Tens of thousands of people take the day every day in Wellington, most have monthly tickets. Losing tickets is really your own fault, whatever they do there's going to be a ticket, or token, or something.

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porche20002

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#456123 6-Apr-2011 21:35

Fair enough.
I think the people of Wellington deserve a new ticketing system as well as Auckland. Having one card to take public transport would be awesome and also bring us up to par with some of the most technologically cities like Hong Kong with their 'Octopus' card and London with 'Oyster'.
They seem to be liking the aquatic theme.

Also was wondering what's the popularity of Snapper in Wellington?

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Chris

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timmmay

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#456124 6-Apr-2011 21:37

It would be pretty handy. Snapper works on some buses here, but some of the bus network is done by other companies that have their own card system. That card system has been used for many years, but it'd be nice if they moved to snapper. Same with the trains, so long as we can still get a monthly ticket not pay per trip.

Pretty much everyone uses snapper if the buses they ride support it.

porche20002

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#456130 6-Apr-2011 21:52

Yea, the monthly rides are really great. Let's hope they keep it that way for trains. I'm glad that they're finally integrating. I'm thinking the RWC helped push the project? But I am curious on how people will fairly use Snapper/Hop on the trains? Could it lead to more ticket evasion?

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Chris

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compost

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#456158 6-Apr-2011 22:38

timmmay:
To be honest, I'm just hoping for them to hurry up on the rail upgrade! I'm mean, who sill has a train conductor going round clipping tickets?!

It's a real hassle for us students.

Wellington does, tens of thousands of people take the trains here. Some days the trains are so full they can't walk down the aisle to get tickets.

Why is it a hassle for students to have tickets clipped?

Looks like all the other rail commuters in Wellington disagree with tiresome timmmay and his shutdown posts...

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/wellington-train-commuters-sick-being-sardines-4099684

A time-poor geek is hardly a geek at all

timmmay

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#456171 6-Apr-2011 23:15

compost:
timmmay:
To be honest, I'm just hoping for them to hurry up on the rail upgrade! I'm mean, who sill has a train conductor going round clipping tickets?!

It's a real hassle for us students.

Wellington does, tens of thousands of people take the trains here. Some days the trains are so full they can't walk down the aisle to get tickets.

Why is it a hassle for students to have tickets clipped?

Looks like all the other rail commuters in Wellington disagree with tiresome timmmay and his shutdown posts...

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/wellington-train-commuters-sick-being-sardines-4099684

Um how is that disagreeing with me? I said some days the trains are so full the ticket collectors can't walk down the aisles, and the article you linked to says the same thing.

There are multiple train lines in Wellington. One or two have gotten crowded recently as everyone has thought "oh no petrol's too expensive i'll take the train", and apparently there aren't spare trains to magically appear out of nowhere to take the people. They're tweaking timetables to try to make it better.

The train line I take is almost never that busy. Right now though they have a number of train carriages out of action due to breakdowns, but they should be working again soon. There are also new trains on the way, they've started arriving and will go into service as they're ready.

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jonherries

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#456395 7-Apr-2011 13:54

It amuses me that:

Auckland has enough moolah for integrated ticketing and Wellington doesn't

and yet

Wellington has had $500 million for new trains and upgrades to the network including stations.

and

the Snapper rollout in Wellington was done at no cost to the WRC (cause the snapper people they make more money this way of course), and was offered to Auckland for free (andI guess this involves the trains too?)

and now Transmetro are complaining they can't clip the paper tickets...

aw

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#456963 9-Apr-2011 10:14

The lack of information as to what Hop is vs what Snapper is, is pretty bad at the moment.

I'm hoping it will be a bit like EFTPOS is now in that while you have multiple card vendors and multiple terminal vendors, it still just works, although EFTPOS had vendor incompatibility in its early days too :(

Not sure how easy it'd be to get "smart" fare calculations like daily caps working with that tho.

Kyanar

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#457481 11-Apr-2011 13:20

This editorial in the Herald seems to answer the question quite well - basically Hop is the branding for the Integrated Ticketing system which Thales won the contract for the clearing house for. Snapper is doing exactly what they said they outright refused to do - plug into Thales. The Auckland Transport system isn't running yet, but when it does the Snapper Hop card will plug into it. The Thales card will also be a Hop card. And theoretically, Visa or someone could also launch a Hop card on a credit card.

lyonrouge

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#466819 8-May-2011 17:32

I have a hop card now, do I need to download the snapper application to top it up? The Hop website (http://www.myhop.co.nz/Pages/default.aspx) makes no mention of topping up using mySnapper (http://www.snapper.co.nz/top-up-online-with-mysnapper/) to top it up.

Lots of trendy kids in T-shirts a successful launch does not make.

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