Integrated ticketing might not happen at all

antoinolachtnai · 09-11-2007 12:32am

The stages system doesn't really make a lot of difference to implementing an integrated ticketing system.

The original point of the integrated ticketing system is to allow you to change buses without having to pay two full fares, and then to somehow allocate the revenue between the two routes. Whether you use the zone system or a stage system makes no real difference to the difficulties. (Zones would make calculating the fare a little simpler, but would do nothing to figure out the division of revenue.)

Capt'n Midnight · 09-11-2007 1:28am

AlekSmart wrote: »

Whilst very few are prepared to admit it,Bus Atha Cliath are running one of the CHEAPEST urban bus services in the EU.
In terms of single cash fares you will travel a country mile before finding an EU capital city with a €1 busfare.......

Rome ?

many cities in europe have fixed price fares unlike here where it's €1.90 or higher per bus depending on the journey

The government subsidy barely covers them for the loss of revenue due to traffic jams, which are in part caused by a lack of public transport because said government won't give them money to buy buses.

How does our one day travel all zones on all public transport compare with other cities ?

Capt'n Midnight · 09-11-2007 1:30am

popebenny16 wrote: »

abolish fares.

I'm not kidding.

~180m per year
Luas would have paid for it for 4 years
or the western rail corridor
or a fraction of the NRA's budget for linear car parks

John R · 09-11-2007 5:12am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Rome ?

many cities in europe have fixed price fares unlike here where it's €1.90 or higher per bus depending on the journey

And in many of these cities the flat fare is close to €1.90. The flat fare in London is approx €2.90, ther purpose of which is to discourage cash payment in favour of smart card and season ticket use.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The government subsidy barely covers them for the loss of revenue due to traffic jams, which are in part caused by a lack of public transport because said government won't give them money to buy buses.

That is the heart of the matter which people conveniently forget when blaming transport operators for poor services. You cannot run a good service if the infrastructure outside your control is in a mess and Dublin is a perfect example of that.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

How does our one day travel all zones on all public transport compare with other cities ?

It doesn't because there isn't one available, bus and rail, bus and luas or rail and luas but no ticket for all 3 and don't even mention the private bus operators.

The one day bus (in pack of 5) at €3.60 compares well, especially considering the coverage the DB network gives. The rail only, luas only and the 3 multi-modal options are not so good, rail-luas and rail-bus at €8.20 and €8.80 in particular. An all-mode ticket at those prices would be on the high side but for a ticket that leaves out one mode they are overpriced.

It is just another in a long line of politically motivated fudges that added another layer of crap to the ticketing system. When the Luas was started it should have been either Bus or Train for the purposes of multi-modal tickets. Instead a third category was added and the accompanying pissing match between the RPA and CIE over revenue split left us with the current stupid.

paulm17781 · 09-11-2007 10:42am

John R wrote: »

And in many of these cities the flat fare is close to €1.90. The flat fare in London is approx €2.90, ther purpose of which is to discourage cash payment in favour of smart card and season ticket use.

But with an Oyster card it's a flat fare of 90p!

Slice · 09-11-2007 11:18am

This in today's IT, by Olivia Kelly;

No integrated transport ticket until 2010

The long-awaited integrated ticketing system for public transport will not be fully operational until 2010, the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) has told Dublin City Council.

Councillors from all parties last night said they were shocked and disappointed the single ticketing scheme for buses, Dart, Irish Rail, Luas and metro systems will be delayed for at least three years, and that €13 million of the €50 million budget for the project has already been spent.

Tim Gaston, director of the project, said the RPA hoped to launch limited integration with the "smartcard" for use on both Luas and rail services in September 2009, but a fully integrated card for all journeys on any type of public transport and some private buses would not be available for at least a year after that.

Following the integration of the scheme, which Mr Gaston said would be used by some 250,000 passengers a year, cash customers would pay more for their journeys than those using smartcards, he said. Smartcards could be topped up in shops, online, at station kiosks or from a user's bank account.

Integrated ticketing was proposed in a report by an Oireachtas transport committee in the late 1990s. In November 2000, then minister for public enterprise Mary O'Rourke approved a plan for the introduction of the smartcard system from late 2002.

However, little progress was made and the project was handed over to the RPA, which was due to introduce the scheme in 2005.

When in 2006 there was no sign of a smartcard, the RPA appeared before another Oireachtas transport committee and said it had begun a procurement process to find a company to develop the cards the previous year. Confusion arose when it emerged Dublin Bus was simultaneously seeking companies to develop its own smartcards.

In July 2006, then minister for transport Martin Cullen established the Integrated Ticketing Project Board to develop the project.

Dublin Bus will still be introducing its smartcards in the coming months, Mr Gaston said. All participants would now "build" their own system, he said, and a separate company would be established to integrate them.

This would collect the revenue when a customer buys or tops up a smartcard, and distribute the proceeds to the owners of whichever mode of transport the customer uses, within 24 hours of the journey.

What a surprise

markpb · 09-11-2007 11:24am

There's no political will to make this happen.

spacetweek · 11-11-2007 10:46pm

Dublin Bus will still be introducing its smartcards in the coming months, Mr Gaston said. All participants would now "build" their own system, he said, and a separate company would be established to integrate them.

That's absolutely awful. That's the worst way of going about it. It will take waaay longer that way.

Slice · 12-11-2007 10:50am

There was a more in-depth article on integrated ticketing in the latest issue of Business & Finance where it explored some of the issues delaying the project. There were two points in the article that were most interesting;

The original intention to make the smart card useable nationwide seemed to be discredited as impractical. The point made was that someone using the card to travel one stop on say the Dublin-Cork line would need to have a minimum balance on their card equal to the maximum cost of the longest journey on that line which would be in the region of €60 to ensure they don't go into a negative balance in case they choose to travel the full length of that line. If people were allowed to go into a negative balance of such an amount what can be done to ensure they don't subsequently stop using the card, get themselves a new card and never pay the difference? The point made was that a requirement to have a minimum balance of €60 to make a one-stop journey on the IE network would be enough to discourage anyone from using the card in this way.

The other point made in the article is that in order to make the smart card attractive to public transport users some sort of discount would need to be offered over the normal cost of the journey for people not using the smart card. The question is who should take the hit on the discount? CIE obviously don't believe they should take the hit and the counter argument that any reduction in revenue would be offset by the increase in patronage - however given that this increase in patronage is likely to occur during peak time when most CIE services are operating at capacity any means that they can't benefit from this increase in use.

The article also pointed out that most other cities that have introduced smart cards have done so at very high cost. It noted that the subvention to London's Oyster card operators for the discount on fares over normal cash fares amounts to £6 billion over a 25 year period.

antoinolachtnai · 12-11-2007 11:57am

The first problem can be resolved easily enough. You can only travel as far on the service as you have credit for. It takes whatever you have as deposit and you can only travel as far as it will bring you. You are subject to inspections same as it is now and if you have exceeded your money, you get fined.

The issue of the discount is pretty obvious. Who pays for pretty much everything else? Anyway, you'll make up the money through reduced dwell time. That's the theory anyway.

This is not a new issue in any case. The whole original concept of the smartcard was to allow discounts when you switched bus. It was a given that discounts would be required from the very beginning.

These are really not the show stoppers as far as I can see.

AlekSmart · 12-11-2007 1:11pm

Quote Anton O L

" You are subject to inspections same as it is now and if you have exceeded your money, you get fined. "

THIS is The most important issue here for ANY PT Operator attempting to impliment or enforce Revenue Protective measures.
The reality is that under current Social Conditions an Operator will be put through the hoops in any attempt to ensure compliance with a fare structure,particularly a cash based one.

At some point all revenue protection comes down to pursuing an offender through the courts if necessary for their fare or any penalty incurred by non-compliance.

This is presently a horrendously expensive procedure which can tie up human resources for days and produce no guarantee of success should a Judge form an opinion that the offender was simply unable to pay and especially if the miscreant is a customer of the Dept of Social and Community Affairs.

If I was attempting to introduce a service I would be making it very clear that Fare Evasion would simply NOT be tolerated and would result in IMMEDIATE eviction and ongoing refusal to carry such offenders......Not nice,socially inclusive or PC..but necessary for commercial survival in the Jungle !! :eek:

Slice · 12-11-2007 3:02pm

The first problem can be resolved easily enough. You can only travel as far on the service as you have credit for. It takes whatever you have as deposit and you can only travel as far as it will bring you. You are subject to inspections same as it is now and if you have exceeded your money, you get fined.

Currently with Luas smart cards you are deducted the cost of the maximum journey and credited the difference when you tag off. They have no way of ensuring you don't travel a distance exceeding the amount you have credit for and random inspections only serve as a deterrent and not any kind of insurance that people don't abuse the system. Also, with the Luas smart cards you have a "purse" value of €4 in case you exceed the credit on your card but this wouldn't work if you had the potential to exceed the credit on your card by as much as €60 for obvious reasons. So the question of how you ensure people don't travel further than they have credit for remains unanswered. If it rolls out nationally are we talking about installing card validation machines in every station across the country and hiring staff to man all stations?

The issue of the discount is pretty obvious. Who pays for pretty much everything else? Anyway, you'll make up the money through reduced dwell time.

Reduced dwell time for Dublin Bus services yes but in the case of IE the number of people waiting to board a train doesn't really influence dwell time. The reduction in dwell time for BE routes wouldn't really be significant either as they don't stop anywhere near as frequently as city busses.

At some point all revenue protection comes down to pursuing an offender through the courts if necessary for their fare or any penalty incurred by non-compliance.

Exactly, if the costs of pursuing someone for fare evasion is greater than the lost revenue from not getting the fare then it doesn't make sense beyond a doing so as a matter of principle - unfortunately principles don't really add much to the bottom line.

bk · 12-11-2007 4:00pm

Slice wrote:

So the question of how you ensure people don't travel further than they have credit for remains unanswered. If it rolls out nationally are we talking about installing card validation machines in every station across the country and hiring staff to man all stations?

Well first off all this is only be rolled out in the dublin area, most of the dart stations already have gates compatible with the cards.

Simply tag on at the start of the journey and tag off at the end of the journey.

The same can be done for commuter trains, just like the DART, you charge the maximum fare at the start and only reduce the cost when the person tags off.

Obviously intercity would be different, perhaps make people buy a ticket at the machine outside the stations (ticket gets put on the smart card) and then on board have the ticket inspectors inspect the ticket like done on most intercity trains at the moment.

IMO the trains and darts are the easier case, buses are more difficult.

You would have no problem putting currently multi use passes, like weekly, monthly tickets on the smart card, but how would you do single journeys?

Does the person tag on when getting on the bus and tag off when getting off the bus again? Sounds like it could really slow things down.

markpb · 12-11-2007 4:04pm

bk wrote: »

You would have no problem putting currently multi use passes, like weekly, monthly tickets on the smart card, but how would you do single journeys?

If they used the middle doors and had two readers, people could tag off on the way out without being much slower. Obviously it would be much easier (but less politically expedient) to move to a fixed fare system, even if only for card holders.

bk · 12-11-2007 5:14pm

markpb wrote:

If they used the middle doors and had two readers, people could tag off on the way out without being much slower.

DB seem to be against this, because of fare evasion by all the scum in Dublin.

Anyway most buses are single door now, so this solution while good, would take many years to implement (phasing out old buses).

markpb wrote:

Obviously it would be much easier (but less politically expedient) to move to a fixed fare system, even if only for card holders.

Actually that is quite a good, simple solution, I like it a lot.

Cash fares continue to pay in the normal way, but for smart card you get one low cost for any journey (say €1 or even €1.40) and transfer with 90 minutes, this would help attract people to getting the smart card and would work in a similar way to London Bus.

12-11-2007 11:31pm

bk wrote: »

DB seem to be against this, because of fare evasion by all the scum in Dublin.

Even the new EV class are single door, I think the last double door buses were the Airlink AVs. So pretty much every bus with the exception of the RVs and AWs have a single door, so yep, won't happen any time soon.

I think this country needs someone new in government and I'm not talking Fine Gael or Labour, someone completely new. I've never been abroad so haven't seen the system in other countries but I hear a lot of interesting stories. Right now the only useful thing to me is the Travel 90 tickets, probably the only form of "integration" we have, if it even counts.

markpb · 13-11-2007 10:00am

bk wrote: »

DB seem to be against this, because of fare evasion by all the scum in Dublin.

I doubt fare evasion has anything to do with it. I regularly see drivers on the 17A using the middle door and no-one can tell me that Finglas, Ballymun, Coolock and Kilbarrack are scum free areas! The other reason, not being able to pull in (around badly parked cars) so both doors are in line with the kerb is probably more important but the gardai are never going to ticket people for parking in a bus stop.

Integrated ticketing might not happen at all

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