MPTE Walrus Smart Card

[R557 ABA]

RE: MPTE Walrus Smart Card

(13/10/2015 11:39)Barney Wrote:  Resorting to paper tickets is never going to happen as, in so many aspects of life, technology IS the way forward. How many of us would give up our smart phones or ipads and start buying/relying on newspapers or books to service our needs? No, the fundamental problem is cost. Last week I read that London receives 24 times the amount of public money than the north west does for public transport initiatives. Merseytravel has a very limited budget and has to live within it, unlike TfL.

I echo Barney's comments, Smart Ticketing is the way forward. Love it or loath it is here to stay (until mobile ticketing is fully developed anyway).

Having just done a months trial of the Solo for Merseytravel, the Wayfarer ticket machines take way too long to clip the ticket when boarding.

[Quackdave]

RE: MPTE Walrus Smart Card

(13/10/2015 10:33)Myllenium2453 Wrote:  I agree. Lets get rid of this electronic scanning rubbish and go back to the systems we all knew, scratch off saveaways, solo and trio tickets with a passengers photo.

All this electronic rubbish is just that, RUBBISH.
GET RID OF IT MERSEYTRAVEL.

I think you're forgetting that "the systems we all knew" had their own fundamental problems, some of which could not be solved by software upgrades, which I'm sure the Walrus vs. Wayfarer issues will be sooner or later.

Scratch-off Saveaways really weren't fit for purpose due to rampant fraud. It was far too easy for passengers to get on a bus with the month and year scratched off, a coin in the other hand, and claim not to be sure of the exact date; when the driver told them, they'd move the coin towards the right bit of the Saveaway as they moved to sit down. How many of those dates ever actually got scratched off? (Actually, on my buses, all of them did, because I took a zero-tolerance approach to evasion - but relatively few drivers seemed willing to invite the frequent abuse, including occasional death threats, that are the usual reward of such a level of vigilance.) When, however, it's the norm for a machine to read your ticket, an air of plausibility no longer cuts it. Whilst I'm not saying they don't exist, there are far fewer people brazen enough to push onto a bus without attempting to present a ticket at all.

Solos with a passenger's photo had, if anything, the opposite problem. I don't think transferability is really much of an issue, given that most purchasers of monthly or four-weekly tickets get their value out of using them for commuting, and, since only one person can be using it at a time, the logistics of sharing one would rarely be practicable. (OK, so someone who lives at A and commutes to B to work 08:30-17:30, could pass their ticket to their mate who lives near B and works from 09:30-16:30 at C; but surely such opportunities are sufficiently few and far between that they can be ignored.) Many operators happily sell four-weekly commercial tickets without any attempt at personalisation, which tends to support this hypothesis. That leaves situations like me coming home from work and needing something from the supermarket. With a photo on my Solo, I have to go myself, even though I'm knackered; without a photo, my wife can go for me. If one adult is making one return bus journey, does it really matter who it is? Anyone who'd consider that scenario morally wrong is really rejecting the whole concept of unlimited travel.

So, in conclusion I think Merseytravel have made the right decision in getting rid of both of those products. As for the electronic replacement, clearly it's not working optimally at the moment. But I think that's primarily software related, and software can be changed. In my experience, the hardware generally reads the card within 2 seconds, which would be fine if that was the whole transaction (as indeed it is when I use a Stagecoach bus). It's the fact that the driver then has to interact with the machine that makes the whole thing unduly tedious.

Once the gremlins have been ironed out, there are (as Oyster has proven) many potential advantages to the electronic system, including easier and more flexible renewal (already there are hundreds of additional vendors as a result of this change), and better analysis of passenger flows to plan better routes.

Overall, I think it's a step in the right direction, and that people's understandable frustrations with the system will prove to be a temporary phenomenon.

[T42 PVM (Moderator)]

RE: MPTE Walrus Smart Card
I prefer the old fashion method of buying my ticket on the Bus/ At a staffed Railway station, Ido agree that the Scratch of Saveaways where not ideal (i can recall watching someone de-face it on a Bus) but i dont think these *smart* Cards are the way forward, their more trouble than its worth and the Cards are clearly faulty, OAP Passes also seem very easy to break as well, Adding onto that i also feel that the *smart* Cards are being used as another way of getting money from Passengers as they charge you to get the Card activated...

Ok a little of topic but am going to also mention this Phone Tickets, again i have seen a number of posts on Arriva's Facebook Page about updates ruining the system, Also what happens if you out and you break your phone or the Battery dies, how are you meant to show your ticket then? Again i dont feel this is the way forward either.

[wirralbus]

RE: MPTE Walrus Smart Card
Then what is the way forward , basically because it looks like paper ickets are on the way out slowly.

[Valandil]

RE: MPTE Walrus Smart Card

(13/10/2015 18:05)Quackdave Wrote:  Essay

You're wasted as a bus driver!

[Barney]

RE: MPTE Walrus Smart Card

(13/10/2015 20:35)wirralbus Wrote:  Then what is the way forward , basically because it looks like paper ickets are on the way out slowly.

In London, tickets are no longer issued by the driver and cash fares are a thing of the past as ALL journeys require pre-paid tickets. In time, this practice will be adopted everywhere in the UK, like it or not.

[Barney]

RE: MPTE Walrus Smart Card

(13/10/2015 21:12)Dentonian Wrote:  Don't be so sure.

1. People will not pay for goods if there is no guarantee they will arrive (in time).

2. Deregulation means most "goods" won't be transferrable. If you pay for a specific ready meal on entering Morrisons and find they are out of stock, you can't nip next door to Tesco and get it at no extra cost.

Without getting too political, there is definitely a move by the party who introduced bus deregulation towards a regional bus franchising similar to the one in London. Walrus is part of the ITSO system and is already transferable on all bus services, irrespective of operator, within the Merseyside ITA just as an Oyster card is in London. I predict that within the next five years this will be extended much further.

[Mayneway]

RE: MPTE Walrus Smart Card

(13/10/2015 09:29)PO59 MXJ Wrote:  The main problem is the passengers not putting their card on the reader correctly. Why they think they are DJs and start spinning their cards around or start trying to swipe it across the reader, i would never know. Then you have the ones who put it on and immediately take it back off and say 'oh its upside down' or the idiots that just cannot wait for the green light. Exactly the same problem with the concessions. People in the South of England dont have this problem, must be the Northern air.

Quite an ignorant way of looking at it. Typical bus driver view blaim it all on the clueless passenger. And what on earth has us being up North got to do with it lol.

If it's anything like the concessionary set up in Manchester the biggest finger of blaim has to go towards operators themselves. All the major operators use completly different ticket machines with scanners in different places that work differently.
If you look at the biggest two operators, First and Stagecoach. First have ticket machines with scanners on the side facing the passenger as they board. They are quite low down and easily reachable for virtually all passengers and read quite quickly.
Stagecoach have the scanners on the top and are slightly higher up and I do see some elderly people struggle to reach them. Then there's the very small circles cut out in the Perspex of the drivers assault screen which make accessing the scanner difficult so the passenger slides the pass on which then corrupts the machine. The scanners also seem to take slightly longer to read than Firsts.
Add to that the fact that some drivers simply wave passengers on with passes (even non concessionary holders with smart card megarider weeklys/monthlys), then there's the plain ignorant drivers who violently snatch the passes of passengers and insist on scanning it themselves.

I know that often time is of the essence but perhaps if drivers (I'm presuming like yourself), took the time to explain to passengers the correct way to scan thier pass it may help the system work better in the future

[CX06 EBK (Administrator)]

RE: MPTE Walrus Smart Card
Sometimes with these Walrus cards passengers take them off before you have had the chance to press the enter button and the machine then goes and says 'Passback detected' which I came across for the first time today. Most are very understanding when you explain how it all works and I have never had any issues with passengers myself.

[E400]

RE: MPTE Walrus Smart Card
Why have Merseytravel gone about developing their own card system if the TfL system is so efficient and great? Surely it would make sense for Merseytravel to work with TfL on deploying a scaled-back version of Oyster on Merseyside? It isn't like they are in competition, and TfL could recover some of their development costs, especially if the Oyster 'model' was the standard across the country. It seems strange that Merseytravel have gone to all the trouble to build something from the ground-up when there is a working system elsewhere which could be adapted to other areas.