MPTE Walrus Smart Card

[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.