(16/05/2015 13:58)jimbo Wrote: [ -> ]With a new ticket machine costing approx £5000 (according to a supervisor at a small company) if the company has 60buses it is a huge investment small companies just can't afford...
I was told the actual ticket machines cost around £1000 each, but when you add on depot readers and software it works out quite expensive.
I seem to remember being told years ago that the argument many of the smaller operators made was that if TFGM were so keen to introduce an Oyster card style system then they should meet some of the cost.
I know merseytravel paid towards machines in merseyside due to them wanting the walrus card in circulation as im sure they paid 25%of the bill if any company bought the wayfarers like arriva,halton etc.
Merseytravel lease machines too, certainly HTL are one of those who do this as were ACE Travel previously.
On Goodwins 99 service today, the driver let everyone on to bus (all were concessionary pass holders). Once seated he then countered how many were on board and then pressed the button on his machine the appropriate number of times. All passengers were well pleased as most of them were carrying shopping.
The other thing I've noticed in GM and I'm a concessionary pass holder myself is that sometimes if a driver is running late on a route for any reason then they will just wave pass holders on just to make up time and I've had this quite a number of times with services operated by First, infact one problem I know about with First Manchester's machines is that for some reason after 09:30 they are still programmed to ask passengers of non-concessionary plus passes (The plain yellow) the destination of where they are going and because of this some drivers will just wave passengers on, this doesn't happen with other First subsidies with the same machines (First West Yorkshire, First South Yorkshire) so whether its a fault with First Manchester's machines I'm not sure.
A notice on the board in Stagecoach Birkenhead depot says we must scan all concess passes as Merseytravel have changed how they manage revenue and only pay out for passes scanned.
We are told to enter any card that doesn't work on the reader (if bent or cracked they can stop working, and/or data on the card becomes corrupt).
All the Cheshire disabled cards have to be entered manually however as for some reason they all come up as a stored value card prompting the destination and balance when placed on the reader. Strange!
Its also recently emerged that if walrus cards come into contact with certain mobile phones, it can wipe the card clean (in the same way it can happen with hotel room cards) . So ALWAYS keep the receipt!!
I think the smart card manufacturers should be coming up with technology that means an innocuous devise like a Mobile Phone doesn't wipe a smart card clean of its data.
This could be pretty damaging to the reputation of bus company and passenger if in the end when Walrus comes fully live an Annual Ticket decides to erase itself off a smart card , have you tried keeping receipts for that long .