MPTE Walrus Smart Card

[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