hmm, I think some banks added some type of age info to cards so that minors can't use the card to buy cigarettes and alcohol. I wonder whether this could be used by transit agencies to adjust fare for kids or seniors.
I can still see transit agencies keeping their travel cards or investing in one, as people under the age of 18 who regularly travel won't have a contactless card and so need a travel card.
It's a good trend but agencies should really be pushing people to get unlimited passes. Moreover, with proof of payment, you shouldn't have to deal with paying your fare more than once a week.
Yeah I think the Swiss approach of “you must have POP” so they can do national passes, free transit after an IC ride, etc without coordinating payment systems deserves a lot more merit. So many induced trips because it’s ‘free’ and amazing your pass can work in other cities! Which raises my willingness to buy it without raising the cost incurred by the local transit agency.
Fare caps are even better than passes, in that the passenger doesn't have to sign up for or select a pass. The fares paid are totaled up for the passenger, by day or week, automatically, and once the amount paid hits the amount of a pass, all future travel is free, for that period.
You should definitely have both but encourage people to get the pass. It certainly induces trips because the fare is a sunk cost (same way owning a car is) and it reduces fare evasion
There are only a few barriers to full adoption of contactless really. The issue of concessions (and this is not hard to figure out), and the fact that some systems are funny about using foreign cards, or charge extra for doing so. Until then the system specific card still has utility.
As you know we have Cubic here in Brisbane as well, and I agree with what you’ve said here. I have the express transit thing activated on my Apple Watch, and it’s super convenient to just bump the screen with the Watch, without having to either get out my wallet to use my now retired go card or bank card, or even activate Apple Pay. No idea how it works, but conveniently the Watch knows the difference between touching on and off the train, verses tapping to pay for a cheese and bacon sausage roll and chocolate milk at your favourite bakery (shoutout to Big Dad’s Pies opposite Nudgee College). Great level of security or peace of mind knowing you won’t accidentally pay for something elsewhere or such. Can’t wait for its full roll out on the buses and CityCats. Heaps of people, probably from out of town or infrequent transit patrons, already expect to be able pay using a bank card on the buses, heck, they’ve been trying to use bank cards for years, so to finally have that will be very welcome for many people who probably will just take it for granted and not appreciate what an upgrade it is.
I considered getting a NFC contactless enabled watch to pay for my travel in London. I didn't because my preferred watch arm is the opposite side to the Oyster touch pad, and you have to get the watch close to the pad to activate it. All a bit awkward.
I love paying directly with my regular debit/credit card in NYC and Portland. Needing to get a special fare card where I live now in SF, and on recent trips to DC and Auckland, felt comparatively, like a giant pain in the ass. Not to mention taking transit in St Pete and Sarasota, Florida a couple years ago where I still had to pay with exact change.
These kinds of convenience upgrades for fares really say so much about a transit system, and it's commitment to actually expanding ridership. These kinds of basic considerations of riders' convenience and dignity are essential for converting people who would not normally consider transit. Affluent people who can afford cars and Ubers will never take transit in a world where that means making sure you're always carrying quarters around. Affluent tourists in your city for a few days will not bother getting a fare card.
I think of my parents visiting me in New York before OMNY was rolled out, or visiting me recently in San Francisco. As people who never take transit, fussing about with the Metro Card was a confusing and alienating experience for them. In San Francisco we walked and walked and walked to the point of exhaustion, because getting BOTH of them to separately download the MUNI app or add Clipper Cards to their Apple Wallet just to pay a single fare back across town to their hotel seemed ridiculous. When welcoming visitors to your city and trying to help them experience the convenience of urban life, it's such a gamechanger to be able to say, "hey, let's hop on this train. Just tap your credit card, it's only $2.50."
So many affluent, car-brained Boomers have lived their entire lives in the era of "American Dream" suburbanization. As their ability to drive declines, the quality of their lives and the safety of our streets will be so much greater if we can convince them to move to places where they can get around without driving. It's the accumulation of all these little indignities (not only payment systems, but also poor signage, inaudible on-board announcements, inadequate shelters/seating at stops) that make people think (reasonably so!) that transit is worse than simply driving everywhere. These little things matter so much to expanding ridership beyond the desperate and the ideologically committed.
We absolutely need to make it much easier to use transit, the alternatives are really easy!
"When welcoming visitors to your city and trying to help them experience the convenience of urban life, it's such a gamechanger to be able to say, "hey, let's hop on this train. Just tap your credit card, it's only $2.50."
So many affluent, car-brained Boomers have lived their entire lives in the era of "American Dream" suburbanization. As their ability to drive declines, the quality of their lives and the safety of our streets will be so much greater if we can convince them to move to places where they can get around without driving. It's the accumulation of all these little indignities (not only payment systems, but also poor signage, inaudible on-board announcements, inadequate shelters/seating at stops) that make people think (reasonably so!) that transit is worse than simply driving everywhere. These little things matter so much to expanding ridership beyond the desperate and the ideologically committed."
Damn, maybe you need a substack - I could not agree more with basically all of this! Especially the getting people on board aspect!
I tap for almost everything now (using my phone most of the time) but as a senior I still need my Presto card in order to get the senior's fare. So still a need for fare cards although great to see the credit/debit card option becoming more common.
I mostly think you're right. However, transit agencies will never be able to solely rely on contactless credit/debt cards because that would mean no longer having travel cards as a way to pay for your commute, and that's a bit problematic.
I'm talking about season tickets where you pay a certain amount of money for an unlimited amount of trips during a certain period of time (monthly, weekly, etc.). I believe these are sometimes called "transit passes" in North America?
1/ Annoyingly, the one mode of travel that doesn't allow tap and go with Oyster or contactless is the Santander docked cycles. Oyster not supported at all, and you have to do full Chip & Pin (or mobile phone high value NFC) on a traditional Pin Entry Device in the dock post to unlock a bike. Or use the dedicated app to pay via the app to get an unlock code. There is a special keyfob (one off cost £3, linked to online cycle account) for a near tap and go experience, but that keyfob isn't linked to Oyster at all (doesn't have an Oyster chip in it, uses difference RFID type solution).
2/ Citymapper app has created an alternative to Oyster for London. Pay for a weekly London zonal pass via Citymapper (at a slight discount to TfL, or extra cost version which adds various cycles, scooters). Citymapper gives you a Mastercard branded payment card, locked down to TfL use only, to operate Tfl fare gates etc. using contactless. Quite nice, but costs Citymapper to operate so if you don't buy a weekly pass for a few weeks, they charge £1 per week as a non-use fee (i.e. £52 pa), although the card will still work for PAYG on your account.
Don't be so hard on London adding contactless later--contactless payment cards were barely an option when Oyster was first rolled out! One bank even released (for a short while) a payment card that had an Oyster chip built in.
London was pretty quick in adopting contactless when it was starting to become commonly available; I would credit 3 companies to accelerating NFC (card) adoption in London and hence the UK: TfL, Tesco (was very quick at enabling in convenience stores in London, and then countrywide), and McDonalds (also very quick rollout in London, and then countrywide)
I don't see credit/debit card replacing transit card (Octopus) in Hong Kong, despite most transit organizations have been installing credit card readers.
First of all, despite officially banned by credit card issuers, many shops in Hong Kong would still ban or charge extra for using credit card on transaction of small amount (Or provide cash rebate for not using credit cards). This led to citizens being accustomed to paying small amount at shops instead of credit cards, including transit fare. The amount of time needed for a transaction to complete on credit card also feel longer than credit card which probably led to people avoiding them at occasions where transit cards can be used,
Second, despite credit card companies have been promoting the use of their cards on transit with concession and discounts, they cannot rivals those that are offered by transit organization. And since transit organization themselves profit from transit card and their widespread adaption by shops and restaurants, while they have to pay bank extra for receiving payment through bank's network, there are little reason for them to extend those discounts to credit cards, which include student discount, senior and disabled people subsidy and discount, transfer discount, round trip discount, monthly tickets, and government subsidy on citizens use of transit.
Third, for a numerous of reasons, Hong Kong have now widely adopted China's UnionPay for debit card, which despite having its own contactless feature, is not widespread on their debit card and they instead promote QR code payment, which would require extra steps to setup and use and is thus not convenient.
Fourth, there are many features supported by transit card that credit cards or other mobile payment solutions are not able to, for example to use as access card for building security system or workplace access control, or for use at car park or as point cards at store, and it is also not possible to get a credit card embedded into a watch or a phone strap that the transit card have been able to, hence if one bring a credit card then they might still have to get an extra transit card for these purposes.
It is possible to get payment cards embedded into rings (McClear), watch straps (Barclays bPay had these, but no more). The challenge is per card scheme rules the card needs to "expire" after a few years, at which point the payment function of the ring etc. is useless.
And it would be possible to use a NFC payment card to trigger door locks, just very expensive to build/operate (needs compliance with PCIDSS standards and similar, and would have a cost of a few cents to check every time under current rules with payment service providers and acquiring banks). In effect, a car park barrier opened by a payment card is doing this, but it makes sense because there is a later expectation of an actual payment on exit.
What they also need is a way to pay for more than 1 person at a time. If a visitor to the city with spouse and youths pay for all with one card not have everyone with their own card.
This is true, but can be solved by storing some info about cards! It would also apply that if you took your fathers transit card you would get a discount!
That being said, not everyone has a debit or credit card! Especially some of the marginalized people who rely on transit.
This was exactly the point that I was going to raise - the poorest of society won't have a mobile device or a credit card or even a debit card, they will scrounge or beg for coins. Cash absolutely needs to continue to be a method to pay fares so as not to discriminate.
Yes, and no. There is a discussion in some countries about "universal bank account", to allow most poorer people to have a debit card to avoid discrimination. Or a "smart" card for benefits payments that can also be used for transit. Some sort of cash arrangement also needs to remain, but not necessarily at the station. Or a limited free transit token for people who are really outside of all other societal ways of payment.
In London, the "discounted" Oyster cards light up additional lights on the display and beep differently (on buses too), so any staff on the gateline can visually check (and potentially do a stop)
This should also hypothetically cut the need for conductors if all stations on a line have high platforms as you don’t really need to deal with diving out fares if you can just use your normal card-this could save agency’s thousands of dollars a year that could be put into attracting more drivers (mostly in the sense if regional rail, but probably most metros will still have drivers for years to come) as well as finish renovating stations to be high platform or a game changing extension/restoration
Septa seems to only have 1 conductor off peak for most trains and considering that Spain seems to have fare machines at all stations (not just core stops for regional rail), why not run Airport lines to Fox Chase since all stations on both lines are accessible (Fox Chase skips North Broad, which isn’t), thus no conductors-perfect for testing
hmm, I think some banks added some type of age info to cards so that minors can't use the card to buy cigarettes and alcohol. I wonder whether this could be used by transit agencies to adjust fare for kids or seniors.
That sounds quite possible!
I can still see transit agencies keeping their travel cards or investing in one, as people under the age of 18 who regularly travel won't have a contactless card and so need a travel card.
Possibly but, at least in Canada it's pretty normal for kids around 12 or 13 to get a debit card!
Woah! Here in the UK, 18 is still standard.
It's a good trend but agencies should really be pushing people to get unlimited passes. Moreover, with proof of payment, you shouldn't have to deal with paying your fare more than once a week.
I think this is an interesting point! Especially re POP systems
Yeah I think the Swiss approach of “you must have POP” so they can do national passes, free transit after an IC ride, etc without coordinating payment systems deserves a lot more merit. So many induced trips because it’s ‘free’ and amazing your pass can work in other cities! Which raises my willingness to buy it without raising the cost incurred by the local transit agency.
I like this model but, I think there are some unique reasons why it works particularly well in Switzerland!
Fare caps are even better than passes, in that the passenger doesn't have to sign up for or select a pass. The fares paid are totaled up for the passenger, by day or week, automatically, and once the amount paid hits the amount of a pass, all future travel is free, for that period.
You should definitely have both but encourage people to get the pass. It certainly induces trips because the fare is a sunk cost (same way owning a car is) and it reduces fare evasion
That's a good point.
There are only a few barriers to full adoption of contactless really. The issue of concessions (and this is not hard to figure out), and the fact that some systems are funny about using foreign cards, or charge extra for doing so. Until then the system specific card still has utility.
For sure, though maybe we can see more nation and provincewide schemes to help reduce the cost of maintaining them!
As you know we have Cubic here in Brisbane as well, and I agree with what you’ve said here. I have the express transit thing activated on my Apple Watch, and it’s super convenient to just bump the screen with the Watch, without having to either get out my wallet to use my now retired go card or bank card, or even activate Apple Pay. No idea how it works, but conveniently the Watch knows the difference between touching on and off the train, verses tapping to pay for a cheese and bacon sausage roll and chocolate milk at your favourite bakery (shoutout to Big Dad’s Pies opposite Nudgee College). Great level of security or peace of mind knowing you won’t accidentally pay for something elsewhere or such. Can’t wait for its full roll out on the buses and CityCats. Heaps of people, probably from out of town or infrequent transit patrons, already expect to be able pay using a bank card on the buses, heck, they’ve been trying to use bank cards for years, so to finally have that will be very welcome for many people who probably will just take it for granted and not appreciate what an upgrade it is.
It's cool that Brisbane is using the same readers as New York! Like Vancouver, Sydney and London using the same Cubic faregates!
I considered getting a NFC contactless enabled watch to pay for my travel in London. I didn't because my preferred watch arm is the opposite side to the Oyster touch pad, and you have to get the watch close to the pad to activate it. All a bit awkward.
I love paying directly with my regular debit/credit card in NYC and Portland. Needing to get a special fare card where I live now in SF, and on recent trips to DC and Auckland, felt comparatively, like a giant pain in the ass. Not to mention taking transit in St Pete and Sarasota, Florida a couple years ago where I still had to pay with exact change.
These kinds of convenience upgrades for fares really say so much about a transit system, and it's commitment to actually expanding ridership. These kinds of basic considerations of riders' convenience and dignity are essential for converting people who would not normally consider transit. Affluent people who can afford cars and Ubers will never take transit in a world where that means making sure you're always carrying quarters around. Affluent tourists in your city for a few days will not bother getting a fare card.
I think of my parents visiting me in New York before OMNY was rolled out, or visiting me recently in San Francisco. As people who never take transit, fussing about with the Metro Card was a confusing and alienating experience for them. In San Francisco we walked and walked and walked to the point of exhaustion, because getting BOTH of them to separately download the MUNI app or add Clipper Cards to their Apple Wallet just to pay a single fare back across town to their hotel seemed ridiculous. When welcoming visitors to your city and trying to help them experience the convenience of urban life, it's such a gamechanger to be able to say, "hey, let's hop on this train. Just tap your credit card, it's only $2.50."
So many affluent, car-brained Boomers have lived their entire lives in the era of "American Dream" suburbanization. As their ability to drive declines, the quality of their lives and the safety of our streets will be so much greater if we can convince them to move to places where they can get around without driving. It's the accumulation of all these little indignities (not only payment systems, but also poor signage, inaudible on-board announcements, inadequate shelters/seating at stops) that make people think (reasonably so!) that transit is worse than simply driving everywhere. These little things matter so much to expanding ridership beyond the desperate and the ideologically committed.
We absolutely need to make it much easier to use transit, the alternatives are really easy!
"When welcoming visitors to your city and trying to help them experience the convenience of urban life, it's such a gamechanger to be able to say, "hey, let's hop on this train. Just tap your credit card, it's only $2.50."
So many affluent, car-brained Boomers have lived their entire lives in the era of "American Dream" suburbanization. As their ability to drive declines, the quality of their lives and the safety of our streets will be so much greater if we can convince them to move to places where they can get around without driving. It's the accumulation of all these little indignities (not only payment systems, but also poor signage, inaudible on-board announcements, inadequate shelters/seating at stops) that make people think (reasonably so!) that transit is worse than simply driving everywhere. These little things matter so much to expanding ridership beyond the desperate and the ideologically committed."
Damn, maybe you need a substack - I could not agree more with basically all of this! Especially the getting people on board aspect!
I tap for almost everything now (using my phone most of the time) but as a senior I still need my Presto card in order to get the senior's fare. So still a need for fare cards although great to see the credit/debit card option becoming more common.
For sure, I think they may be able to apply a concession fare to your car. IIRC you can do it for student fares? Could be mistaken
I mostly think you're right. However, transit agencies will never be able to solely rely on contactless credit/debt cards because that would mean no longer having travel cards as a way to pay for your commute, and that's a bit problematic.
Can you explain what you mean by travel cards?
I'm talking about season tickets where you pay a certain amount of money for an unlimited amount of trips during a certain period of time (monthly, weekly, etc.). I believe these are sometimes called "transit passes" in North America?
I mean you can still have this, and arguably with capping its better
Two points about NFC in London
1/ Annoyingly, the one mode of travel that doesn't allow tap and go with Oyster or contactless is the Santander docked cycles. Oyster not supported at all, and you have to do full Chip & Pin (or mobile phone high value NFC) on a traditional Pin Entry Device in the dock post to unlock a bike. Or use the dedicated app to pay via the app to get an unlock code. There is a special keyfob (one off cost £3, linked to online cycle account) for a near tap and go experience, but that keyfob isn't linked to Oyster at all (doesn't have an Oyster chip in it, uses difference RFID type solution).
2/ Citymapper app has created an alternative to Oyster for London. Pay for a weekly London zonal pass via Citymapper (at a slight discount to TfL, or extra cost version which adds various cycles, scooters). Citymapper gives you a Mastercard branded payment card, locked down to TfL use only, to operate Tfl fare gates etc. using contactless. Quite nice, but costs Citymapper to operate so if you don't buy a weekly pass for a few weeks, they charge £1 per week as a non-use fee (i.e. £52 pa), although the card will still work for PAYG on your account.
Don't be so hard on London adding contactless later--contactless payment cards were barely an option when Oyster was first rolled out! One bank even released (for a short while) a payment card that had an Oyster chip built in.
London was pretty quick in adopting contactless when it was starting to become commonly available; I would credit 3 companies to accelerating NFC (card) adoption in London and hence the UK: TfL, Tesco (was very quick at enabling in convenience stores in London, and then countrywide), and McDonalds (also very quick rollout in London, and then countrywide)
I don't see credit/debit card replacing transit card (Octopus) in Hong Kong, despite most transit organizations have been installing credit card readers.
First of all, despite officially banned by credit card issuers, many shops in Hong Kong would still ban or charge extra for using credit card on transaction of small amount (Or provide cash rebate for not using credit cards). This led to citizens being accustomed to paying small amount at shops instead of credit cards, including transit fare. The amount of time needed for a transaction to complete on credit card also feel longer than credit card which probably led to people avoiding them at occasions where transit cards can be used,
Second, despite credit card companies have been promoting the use of their cards on transit with concession and discounts, they cannot rivals those that are offered by transit organization. And since transit organization themselves profit from transit card and their widespread adaption by shops and restaurants, while they have to pay bank extra for receiving payment through bank's network, there are little reason for them to extend those discounts to credit cards, which include student discount, senior and disabled people subsidy and discount, transfer discount, round trip discount, monthly tickets, and government subsidy on citizens use of transit.
Third, for a numerous of reasons, Hong Kong have now widely adopted China's UnionPay for debit card, which despite having its own contactless feature, is not widespread on their debit card and they instead promote QR code payment, which would require extra steps to setup and use and is thus not convenient.
Fourth, there are many features supported by transit card that credit cards or other mobile payment solutions are not able to, for example to use as access card for building security system or workplace access control, or for use at car park or as point cards at store, and it is also not possible to get a credit card embedded into a watch or a phone strap that the transit card have been able to, hence if one bring a credit card then they might still have to get an extra transit card for these purposes.
It is possible to get payment cards embedded into rings (McClear), watch straps (Barclays bPay had these, but no more). The challenge is per card scheme rules the card needs to "expire" after a few years, at which point the payment function of the ring etc. is useless.
And it would be possible to use a NFC payment card to trigger door locks, just very expensive to build/operate (needs compliance with PCIDSS standards and similar, and would have a cost of a few cents to check every time under current rules with payment service providers and acquiring banks). In effect, a car park barrier opened by a payment card is doing this, but it makes sense because there is a later expectation of an actual payment on exit.
What they also need is a way to pay for more than 1 person at a time. If a visitor to the city with spouse and youths pay for all with one card not have everyone with their own card.
With open payment and mobile apps, is there still any good reason to keep farecards? Doesn't everyone have a credit/debit card or smartphone?
They need someway to differentiate discounted fares. Senior, Child, Student etc. if I borrow my fathers card should I get a Senior fare?
This is true, but can be solved by storing some info about cards! It would also apply that if you took your fathers transit card you would get a discount!
That being said, not everyone has a debit or credit card! Especially some of the marginalized people who rely on transit.
This was exactly the point that I was going to raise - the poorest of society won't have a mobile device or a credit card or even a debit card, they will scrounge or beg for coins. Cash absolutely needs to continue to be a method to pay fares so as not to discriminate.
Yes, and no. There is a discussion in some countries about "universal bank account", to allow most poorer people to have a debit card to avoid discrimination. Or a "smart" card for benefits payments that can also be used for transit. Some sort of cash arrangement also needs to remain, but not necessarily at the station. Or a limited free transit token for people who are really outside of all other societal ways of payment.
In London, the "discounted" Oyster cards light up additional lights on the display and beep differently (on buses too), so any staff on the gateline can visually check (and potentially do a stop)
This should also hypothetically cut the need for conductors if all stations on a line have high platforms as you don’t really need to deal with diving out fares if you can just use your normal card-this could save agency’s thousands of dollars a year that could be put into attracting more drivers (mostly in the sense if regional rail, but probably most metros will still have drivers for years to come) as well as finish renovating stations to be high platform or a game changing extension/restoration
I agree, though the issue of conductors is pretty uncommon these days!
Septa seems to only have 1 conductor off peak for most trains and considering that Spain seems to have fare machines at all stations (not just core stops for regional rail), why not run Airport lines to Fox Chase since all stations on both lines are accessible (Fox Chase skips North Broad, which isn’t), thus no conductors-perfect for testing