Luas daily capping for Leap card holders announced

coylemj

Sounds similar to the daily capping on the Oyster card in London but currently only announced for Luas trips using the Leap Card...

http://t.co/4UnUZ9Sg

snappieT

A step in the right direction, but there are 4 serious problems, in my eyes:

• The cap for a week is higher than the cost of a week long card! €23.50 cap, max-zone 7-day ticket is €23 at most. I just don't get why they're trying to get that extra 50c out of people.
• The days are fixed Monday - Sunday. Why not a rolling week? I can start my 7 day ticket any time, this should be no different.
• No consideration of zones. You know where I tag on and off, so you know how many zones I travel. Work out the cheapest fare for me, don't assume maximum zones.
• It's only Luas, not across all the operators. This one doesn't surprise me so much.

etchyed

snappieT wrote: »

• The cap for a week is higher than the cost of a week long card! €23.50 cap, max-zone 7-day ticket is €23 at most. I just don't get why they're trying to get that extra 50c out of people.

€23.50 is the price of an all-zone both lines Flexi ticket. The fact that there are no caps for zone-specific period tickets means that nearly everyone is still better off buying a paper ticket.

Maybe protecting revenue is the aim here, but surely most Luas customers are aware of their ticket options, given that they buy their tickets from vending machines where 7-day tickets are readily available.

When it comes to Dublin Bus, I'd imagine a much larger proportion of its customers are paying more than they should. Automatically capping their fares at what they could be paying if they bought a period ticket would have much greater implications for DB's income. So I can't see that happening any time soon.

Like you, I agree that this is a step in the right direction overall, but there's still a long way to go.

james142

snappieT wrote: »

A step in the right direction, but there are 4 serious problems, in my eyes:

• The cap for a week is higher than the cost of a week long card! €23.50 cap, max-zone 7-day ticket is €23 at most. I just don't get why they're trying to get that extra 50c out of people.
• The days are fixed Monday - Sunday. Why not a rolling week? I can start my 7 day ticket any time, this should be no different.
• No consideration of zones. You know where I tag on and off, so you know how many zones I travel. Work out the cheapest fare for me, don't assume maximum zones.
• It's only Luas, not across all the operators. This one doesn't surprise me so much.

When it says Mon - Sun, I think they mean any day of the week, not just Monday and Sunday

What time constitutes a Weekly Cap (Mon-Sun)?
A Weekly Cap (Mon-Sun) runs from the first service on Monday to the last service on Sunday.

etchyed

james142 wrote: »

When it says Mon - Sun, I think they mean any day of the week, not just Monday and Sunday

snappieT means that the cap only applies to fares deducted from your card from Monday to Sunday. Meaning that if you make €25 worth of journeys from Wednesday to the following Tuesday, your card will not be refunded €1.50.

snappieT

etchyed wrote: »

€23.50 is the price of an all-zone both lines Flexi ticket.

Ah, thanks. That sort of distils that problem down to the zone problem so - people can't get a 7-day ticket for just what they use.

james142

etchyed wrote: »

snappieT means that the cap only applies to fares deducted from your card from Monday to Sunday. Meaning that if you make €25 worth of journeys from Wednesday to the following Tuesday, your card will not be refunded €1.50.

Aah I get it now

the groutch

etchyed wrote: »

When it comes to Dublin Bus, I'd imagine a much larger proportion of its customers are paying more than they should. Automatically capping their fares at what they could be paying if they bought a period ticket would have much greater implications for DB's income. So I can't see that happening any time soon.

I think it's more than coincidence that all their T90s and Ramblers expire on dec 31st, there may well be some something in the works.

Victor

snappieT wrote: »

[*]The cap for a week is higher than the cost of a week long card! €23.50 cap, max-zone 7-day ticket is €23 at most. I just don't get why they're trying to get that extra 50c out of people.

As suggested above, you appear to be wrong. Notably, but a 7-day ticket commits you to that expenditure from the start and will only be valid for the next week. Leap doesn't do the same.

[*]The days are fixed Monday - Sunday. Why not a rolling week? I can start my 7 day ticket any time, this should be no different.

Administrative simplicity. By the way you are suggesting it, it would need to work out if it should impose a cap every at every end-of-day and potentially revise a cap it has already put in place.

[*]No consideration of zones. You know where I tag on and off, so you know how many zones I travel. Work out the cheapest fare for me, don't assume maximum zones.

Again, administrative simplicity. Can you imagine having to work it out for someone who mostly stayed in two zones, but occasionally went elsewhere - there rows would be crazy.

[*]It's only Luas, not across all the operators. This one doesn't surprise me so much.

They are deliberately rolling it out slowly , as confidence that it works is important. An Irish Rail cap is coming and an all-operator (or an all-PSO operator) cap of some kind will happen eventually. That said, I would have liked for there to have been a cap, even if it was a high one, from the start.

etchyed

Victor wrote: »

Again, administrative simplicity. Can you imagine having to work it out for someone who mostly stayed in two zones, but occasionally went elsewhere - there rows would be crazy.

It appears to be possible.

snappieT

Victor wrote: »

Administrative simplicity. By the way you are suggesting it, it would need to work out if it should impose a cap every at every end-of-day and potentially revise a cap it has already put in place.

Cop out. It would take almost nothing to calculate the previous 6 days of expenditure each night to determine the maximum that should be charged the following day.

Victor wrote: »

Again, administrative simplicity. Can you imagine having to work it out for someone who mostly stayed in two zones, but occasionally went elsewhere - there rows would be crazy.

No, it makes the whole concept half-worthless. It is trivial to figure out these matters - you just figure out which is the cheapest ticket to place the user on, and go with that. If it's one trip to a further zone, then perhaps it's a case of charging extra for that trip. If it's enough trips to make it cheaper to "expand" the ticket out to more zones, then do.

NuMarvel

snappieT wrote: »

Cop out. It would take almost nothing to calculate the previous 6 days of expenditure each night to determine the maximum that should be charged the following day.

It would be easy to calculate the previous 6 days worth, but the problem would be deciding when the 7 day cap restarts. It would be messy and confusing for passengers if the balance was recalculated and changed every day.

It could feasibly be based on when someone first tags on, but I don't think everyone would remember that and there could be so many permutations of usage, it would be a nightmare to try and plan.

The simplest solution would be adding a 7 day ticket to the card itself, like the Oyster Travelcard, but that seems to be a while away yet. Until then, its better to have a consistent message for everyone, and let people make their own choice.

snappieT wrote: »

No, it makes the whole concept half-worthless. It is trivial to figure out these matters - you just figure out which is the cheapest ticket to place the user on, and go with that. If it's one trip to a further zone, then perhaps it's a case of charging extra for that trip. If it's enough trips to make it cheaper to "expand" the ticket out to more zones, then do.

I think they should have made the weekly cap cheaper than the cheapest 7 day ticket. Make it €22 (or less) for all travel, across all zones. That way you encourage more people to use the card, rather than just those who travel across both zones. Nice, clean, and simple, for everyone.

AlekSmart

snappieT wrote: »

Cop out. It would take almost nothing to calculate the previous 6 days of expenditure each night to determine the maximum that should be charged the following day.


No, it makes the whole concept half-worthless. It is trivial to figure out these matters - you just figure out which is the cheapest ticket to place the user on, and go with that. If it's one trip to a further zone, then perhaps it's a case of charging extra for that trip. If it's enough trips to make it cheaper to "expand" the ticket out to more zones, then do.

Half-Worthless....Possibly the most accurate description of the entire Integrated Ticketing System to date.

snappieT

NuMarvel wrote: »

It would be easy to calculate the previous 6 days worth, but the problem would be deciding when the 7 day cap restarts.

It restarts "every day". I should only spend today what brings me to the cap including the last 6 days. Tomorrow, everything shifts on one day.

NuMarvel

snappieT wrote: »

It restarts "every day". I should only spend today what brings me to the cap including the last 6 days. Tomorrow, everything shifts on one day.

So, on Day 8, you're charged for 1 week and a day's travel, because Day 1 has fallen out of the rolling weekly cap. Which means that by the time you get to Day 13, you've paid for a week's and 6 day's travel. Which would be alot more than two weekly caps, depending on how often it's been used.

Come Day 14, it could reset itself to only have deducted two weekly caps, but until then people's balances are going up and down as the cap recalculates everyday. So, people will conceivably need to keep a reserve of 6 days travel on the card to account for when they fall out of the rolling weekly cap. In which case, it's probably easier and cheaper just to buy a 7 day ticket and hope for the quick introduction of prepaid products on the Leap Card.

Be well and win

the groutch wrote: »

I think it's more than coincidence that all their T90s and Ramblers expire on dec 31st, there may well be some something in the works.

My understanding is that all of these will go at some stage this year and by year end, the only way you can buy any kind of weekly/season ticket in Dublin will be with a Leapcard

Aard

While a 7-day rolling cap makes sense to those of us who are interested in public transport, or indeed those of us mathematically competent enough to appreciate it, the concept would go over the vast majority of the general public's heads. Sure, we'd understand why sometimes you might have €2 deducted, but other times you'd have €3 deducted (i.e. to keep the 7-day rolling cap at €23.50, in this example). However, can you imagine the uproar when people get upset that they've been "wrongly" (read: not wrongly) done out of a euro or two? Unfortunately for us, for this kind of thing to succeed it has to cater for and be easily understood by the average Joe. Keep it simple stupid, as they say. Let me just state for the record that I'd love a rolling cap.

I've run a few examples using a rolling cap versus the Mon-Sun cap. Tbh there isn't much difference in the end. The only time where the rolling cap is more favourable is when you'd be travelling on weekends as well as during the week, and when the weekly cost of travel is significantly higher than the cap (over €30). Think of it this way, the rolling cap is really only useful when there is a fare to be calculated every day, which could alter the running total. But if there's one or two days a week you don't travel, then the Mon-Sun is just as good.

In the examples I ran, the only one where the rolling cap saved any money over the Mon-Sun was where there was travel at least six days a week, most tickets were 5-zoners, and there was the odd extra trip added randomly (maybe our guy used the Luas to get around town on a Friday evening, or made the odd stop-off at Dundrum on the way home :pac: ). Even with an average weekly spend of over €33 (before the caps being applied), there was only a saving of €1.10 over the three weeks of the simulation.

Needless to say, this kind of thing fascinates me. If I were the guy above, I'd obviously prefer to save the extra €0.37 per week. However, given the potential lack of transparency (on which the integrity of the system depends) I think it's a reasonable trade-off. The Leap Card project has enough on its plate atm, and public sentiment towards it isn't great. Expecting people to keep a running tally of how much they spent this day seven days ago in order to make sure they haven't been overcharged is unlikely to wash in the short term. If the public embrace the system as always being reliable, then perhaps in the future a rolling-cap could be introduced. Until then, for the minor savings it will bring to the few, I think it better to stick to something understandable and more or less tried and tested.

NuMarvel

Out of curiosity, does anyone know of any cities or countries that have a rolling cap on tickets, instead of a fixed cap?

Aard

Never heard of any city implementing it before. Heck even in Paris if you want to buy a Weekly ticket, it's still a Monday-to-Sunday gig.

etchyed

Aard wrote: »

"wrongly" (read: not wrongly)

This made me lol.

Podge_irl

They probably would have been better off not introducing a weekly cap at all - there is a reason there is only a daily limit on Oyster cards. A rolling cap would be incredibly difficult to manage administratively and is really not an option. What they have introduced works well for those who commute on the LUAS and use it occasionally on the weekend.

Its a step in the right direction. Obviously there are a number of steps to go, such as either tag on/tag off bus fares or flat bus fares and broadening the cap to all modes of transport. Progress is progress though.

Dravokivich

There'd probably be less of a need to tag off on a bus depending on what tickets get loaded onto the leap card and how much they cost.