The cost to upgrade public transport ticketing system to contactless - how much?

bk

And keep in mind, if you topup your leap card with cash in a store, the NTA are paying a percentage of the topup to the store. I believe it was previously reported at 2.5%. That would be on the high end of merchant payment card transaction fees, with the volume of transactions that the NTA handle, I'd expect them to be able to negotiate rates much lower then that, so they would actually save money, versus in store top-ups.

Obviously if you topup via the Leap card app, then they are already covering the fees there.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122717377#Comment_122717377

Er.. I never said I would "cobble together a card reader from a kids science kit". I work with embedded systems for a living, and what I said was that if I were asked to design such a reader, the electronic component costs would probably not exceed €50 (€8-10 for a microcontroller, €13 for the modem, the rest for power and NFC supports)… and that's on a pretty low order quantity, with me using what is probably an over-spec microcontroller for what is a very simple job. I did say that you'd spend much more in making it usable in a hostile environment. The point was that the components are really cheap, the enclosure is more expensive, but the whole lot is still not going to be €1000 a site - I guessed around €300.

But I was making the same point as you - the hardware in the terminals isn't the cost, integration and certification and audit is. I've also worked on payment systems extensively in the past - and I know how the PCI DSS compliance costs escalate really quickly once you start directly handling card account details. However, the only way to make this system work with the kind of response times needed is to directly handle card details and process the payments within the organisation - so the solutions provider will have to do this, which is a more expensive approach than just using a general-purpose acquirer like Stripe or WorldPay.

Sam Russell

My cost for a ticket unit of €1,000 was just a high estimate way above the likely expected cost.

If I were going to specify one, I would check out the various models used in other European countries and select a short list of good ones and find out the likely unit cost from the transport user, and the likely software cost and likely licence costs.

It is unlikely that there would be huge differences between those on the short list, but I cannot see the headline cost quoted in the first post even being less than ridiculously over the top. We would be looking for about 2,000 units to start with, plus suitable software and support.

L1011

Ticketer charge £2,900 for the bus terminal and £375 for each tag point. The idea that they'd be as cheap as some of the numbers being thrown around here is laughable.

That is a UK government framework price, so negotiated down on huge volume. My memory is Ticketer are the cheap vendor in the market!

You might be able to breadbox something cheap, but it won't last in an on-vehicle environment, or be servicable for the decades that kit can get used for.

markpb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122718305#Comment_122718305

I take your point but it’s a little futile to look at a project of this size and duration and try to price it based on individual components when those components are not where the cost arises. It’s like trying to calculate the cost of a Boeing 787 by pricing the screws and rivets first. Sure you’ll get some cost but you’ll completely miss the things that really drive the price of it and wonder why it doesn’t cost $650,000.

You understand this but others will read your post and get angry that the government are buying $1,000 card readers when they could be buying them for $300.

Grey123

I can understand the need for an alternative to Leap cards however we need to do far more to push the Leap card. When I lived in Dublin I saw the same people every morning fumbling with a change, not old people either.

I think it would currently save them about 60c a trip but seems like that's not enough. I have friends who only take public transport infrequently, a few times a year and none of them have Leap cards. Why even look into something that will only save you a few euro a year. I don't carry rewards cards that might only save me a few cents.

Should there be a push to get a Leap card into the hands of everyone in the country? Or would it just be a waist?Perhaps a much higher fee for not using a Leap card. Change them accordingly for the time they add.

KrisW1001

Debit/Credit cards acceptance is primarily for visitors and people who might very rarely use public transport but currently can't by not carrying a Leap card, or cash (outside Dublin). It also helps to bring customers in: if you've never taken a bus in Dublin before, the current price of your first journey is €10.00 (€5 leap card plus minimum top-up), and you've got to go to a shop to buy that ticket - not very helpful when it's raining, you're walking by a stop, and you see a bus coming towards you: that's one lost fare right there, and it happens millions of times a year.

But Leap cards aren't going away. Credit/Debit cards will fare-cap per day and maybe per week, but discounts beyond that will only be avaialable using Leap cards: anyone with a Monthly, Young Adult, or Annual ticket will use a Leap card. Also, some people are more comfortable with something like a Leap card that has a limited cost to you if you lose it (and you get the money back if you've registered it) - I still use an Oyster card when I'm in London because I don't fancy losing my credit-card while abroad.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122727581#Comment_122727581

That is actually the main point of introducing contactless payments. Once in place, the plan is to drop taking cash completely, so it solves this problem.

Your only option for paying for a fare will be Leap card or your contactless card (and maybe QR code paper tickets).

That is what happened on London bus, they introduced the Oyster card first, but still toke cash too. But once they added support for contactless cards, they then dropped cash as an option. Big improvements in dwell and journey times.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122728106#Comment_122728106

Debit/Credit cards acceptance is primarily for visitors and people who might very rarely use public transport but currently can't by not carrying a Leap card, or cash (outside Dublin).

I don't agree with that, I suspect most regular adult Leap card users will actually swap to contactless cards too, I know I certainly will.

Of course kids, under 26's, free travel pass and taxsaver users will still need a card. But I don't see why regular users would carry an extra leap card when the debt card/phone they already have will do exactly the same thing.

A person like my better half, she gets the bus too and from work every day. €2 a trip, €4 return. There really wouldn't be any reason for her to keep using a Leap card. She would pay the exact same €4 per day with her contactless card.

You can even still benefit from daily and weekly capping with contactless cards, at least you can with it in London.

Grey123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122728370#Comment_122728370

I should have specified “in the interim” while we wait for contactless.

There is a huge cost to everyone because some people just don’t bother getting a Leap card and need to fumble around with change. A dozen people could board a bus while the driver deals with one or two.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122729055#Comment_122729055

Sure, though the contactless is supposed to be rolled out over the next two years, so I don't think it would be worth it at this stage. Just focus on getting it rolled out and rid of cash.

Pauliedragon

The problem with the leap card is they moved it to the post office only for a cash top up. Not everyone likes/trusts apps or phone is dead. People now have to operate under PO opening hours rather than shops/petrol stations which obviously have much more flexible opening hours.

p_haugh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122729290#Comment_122729290

Just to clarify - it's available anywhere that is part of the post point system, so a lot of stores as well as post offices.

Still nowhere near as much locations compared to when leap card was available at payzone locations, mind you

Pauliedragon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122730689#Comment_122730689

I didn't realise that. Thanks for clearing that up. That makes it a bit more accessbile. They should put that out there a bit more a lot of people think it's post office branch only.

L1011

They never say Post Office anywhere, they always say Postpoint.

I've seen some places get Postpoint terminals just for that and, well, not want to do any other Postpoint functions.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122728370#Comment_122728370

Primarily for visitors, not only. As in London, the greatest growth in ridership will be from short-term visitors when this is introduced. That does not mean that residents won’t also use it, but the experience of London shows that most who already use enough public transport to already have a Leap card isn’t likely to abandon it and use their card/phone instead. The high adoption of monthly and annual tickets in London does keep people using their Oyster cards, though.

For anyone wondering if, under the new system, your Leap card could be added to your existing phone wallets: it would be an enormous hack for stored credit, and it just wouldn’t work at all for monthly and annual tickets (phone card-wallets are only for payment cards, and the stored-ticket part of Leap is a different application). A dedicated Leap-card app would be needed, but the way Apple in particular penalises third party applications, it would be far less reliable than the plastic card.

Sam Russell

Perhaps they could offer Leap cards for €10 with €10 credit - either permanently or for a limited time offer.

This could also be offered at airports and ferry ports which would be aimed at tourists.

Can Leap cards be topped up at IR stations?

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122732085#Comment_122732085

Leap cards can be topped up and indeed bought at any Irish Rail TVM in the GDA. Never tried in, say, Sligo though.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122732095#Comment_122732095

I think that TfI should try and increase the reach of Leap cards and basically removing the €5 deposit for the card would be a start.

[Not sure, but I thought the €5 charge was refundable - but maybe that is not so.]

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122732112#Comment_122732112

It is refundable, to any SEPA IBAN

p_haugh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122732095#Comment_122732095

It seems ticket machines outside the GDA don't have the smart card readers installed, it seems. At least that's the case in Kilkenny and some of the stations on the Sligo line.

Which is wild TBH, sure Kilkenny has a town service that uses leap cards so it should really have the option!

goingnowhere

Anywhere where Irish Rail accepts LEAP epurse for travel the ticket machines will support sale of adult leap cards and top up services.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122731989#Comment_122731989

Again, I disagree, primarily it is for most regular public transport users. I believe in time it will replace Leap cards as the primary way of paying fares for regular frequent public transport users. Visitors using it would be a secondary benefit IMO.

On you second paragraph. The plan is too move to account based ticketing. That means while people will still have Leap cards, it will work differently from today. Rather then storing money and tickets directly on the card like today, in future the plan is for the card just to have a unique account id on it which will tie it to an account in a backend database. When you “topup” or buy a weekly ticket, the money/ticket will be “stored” in the backend, rather then on the card like today. In other words it will work more like how a bank debit card works today, your money isn’t actually on the card, it is recorded on a database in the bank (obvious simplifications here).

As a result in wouldn’t be a hack to put virtual leap card on phones. You would really just be putting the unique account ID on the phone, to be presented to the validators when you tag in. The validator doesn’t really care if it is a physical card or phone. Annual tickets, etc. would be stored in the Leap system backend.

This is all well supported by Apple/Google Wallets, such transit card systems have and are being rolled out by transit authorities around the world.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122732185#Comment_122732185

It's definitely available in Limerick Colbert. Haven't tried anywhere else.

p_haugh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122733163#Comment_122733163

Sorry yes, I should clarify - outside GDA and other big cities. Cork Kent would also have it presumably, given you can use the leap card on commuter services to Mallow, Middleton, Cobh, etc.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122731989#Comment_122731989

Kris, here are some links that explain Account Based Ticketing (ABT) that you might be interested in:

https://littlepay.com/the-role-of-account-based-ticketing-abt-in-public-transportation-systems/

https://www.paragon-id.com/en/inspiration/what-is-account-based-ticketing-and-what-are-the-benefits

https://vixtechnology.com/solutions/account-based-ticketing/

tldr:

Unlike a traditional ticketing system, where the value is stored on a ticket or card, in an ABT system, the transaction is carried out when a user identifies themselves. They can do so by using their smart card, mobile phone, or other payment methods like an EMV card, and the system will automatically deduct the correct fare from the account. 

Basically the Physical Leap card just becomes a physical carrier of a digital token and that digital token can be carried on a smart phone instead if you want. And yes contactless cards can instead be the token.

KrisW1001

Yes, I am familiar with this approach - it’s basically payment-card ticketing, with an add-on to allow a Leap-like “id only" cards tied to a non-EMV credit-card (America…) or remote stored-value wallet as a secondary method. The infrastructure cost is lower, but so is reliability. These are popular in the USA, where PT systems struggle to get funding for payment infrastructure, and "everyone" has a phone with an EMV card-wallet on it. Note that the links you provided, all from ABT system-vendors, push this as an alternative to traditional paper or cash ticketing, not as a supplement or improvement to smart-cards.

Fundamentally, ABT is slower than stored-value - the round-trip is longer and has more participants. The question is only if "slower" is still "fast enough". For that, you're in the area of system provisioning and cloud infrastructure (and efficiency of software too, although these days businesses will happily scale out a **** implementation rather than invest to improve its performance: in every business, capital expenditure is always harder to justify than operational expenditure).

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122734395#Comment_122734395

Fundamentally, ABT is slower than stored-value - the round-trip is longer and has more participants

Err… that isn't how it works!

The validators read the token from your Leap card/phone/EMV card and store the transaction in the ticket machine. Overnight this is transmitted to the backend ("cloud" service) [1], the backend works out how much you owe if you used multiple times during the day, it will apply daily and weekly capping, etc. and it is that point overnight that your bank account/card is really charged.

[1] The actual transmission might not wait until overnight and instead happen as soon as the bus has a data connection.

This isn't slow, the readers read the token from the card just as fast as the current leap card, actually likely much faster as they only need to read from the card and not both read and write like you do with current Leap cards.

To be clear, there is no "round trip" as you put it happening on the bus, unlike say regular in store EMV, it is all happening offline locally on the bus, so it is all very fast.

I suppose you could claim it is slow because peoples bank accounts don't get charged until later that night, but that isn't really important in terms of speedy on bus operations.

BTW Something similar happens with the current setup. While they store money on the card, the transaction is actually recorded to the ticket machine, overnight the transactions are copied to the Leap backend systems, so that part is quiet similar.

The backend systems, them being in a on premise data center or a vendors "cloud" is neither here nor there, there are pros and cons to both approach. In the end they both end up being a bunch of servers in a data center.

To be clear, the current Leap card system records every single Leap card transaction to a backend database and processes them, so the amount of storage and processing power you would need between the current setup and ABT would be much of a muchness.

Your claim that ABT just being something that underfunded US transit authorities are moving too is laughably wrong. Like you know in London they have already moved to an ABT system for their contactless EMV support:

https://infratech.gihub.org/infratech-case-studies/transport-for-london-open-loop-payment-system-allows-riders-to-use-their-own-payment-cards-instead-of-top-up-cards-and-paper-tickets/

The NTA and pretty much every transport authority in Europe are planning to move to ABT.

gjim

Yeah i've used these contactless debit card systems in a couple of countries - one in a different continent - and there was no delay at all tagging on/off - unlike when I used the same card in an ATM in the same places where it seemed to take seconds every step with clearly some background communications going on.

Vaguely related story. I was in a group in the pub recently with a guy I didn't know who had thought he'd pulled some stroke during a visit to Amsterdam - claimed he had meant to buy an OV card but noticed that flashing his wallet at the barriers "just worked". So he'd happily spend the week "using the public transport for free". I asked did he also tag-off with his wallet - he laughed thinking I was joking. He stopped laughing when I told him check his bank statement and that he was probably being charged max fare per trip - 10 or 20 euro - for each tram ride if he never bother tagging-off.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122734606#Comment_122734606

Happy to be corrected on the mechanism, and point taken, but please do me the courtesy of reading what I actually wrote regarding the links you posted. I said that the vendors were clearly aiming at underfunded PT systems in the US, not that it this system was only good for them.

If you've invested in a smart card system, many of these providers can't build on that without charging you to reimplement functionality that you already had, so that's why they target operations that are still on paper or cash.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122735174#Comment_122735174

Yep in the Netherlands OVPay aims for less then 500ms to read your card, which is vastly faster then Leap. Of course this is because the bus is just reading the card offline and just storing it locally, whereas the ATM/shops they are making an online connection to your bank account to check your balance and record the transaction.

LOL on the story, I can totally see that happening here and folks complaining on Joe Duffy!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122735346#Comment_122735346

I linked to those websites because they had good explanations of how ABT worked and it was clear that you didn’t really understand all the details on how it works.

Those companies maybe US focused, but that isn’t the point, the point is they are using the same ABT technology and concepts as the likes of Cubic and Indra are doing in Europe for European Transport authorities.

On your second paragraph, yes and no, yes you need to reimplement everything, but no it isn’t just aimed at operators still on paper and cash, it is also aimed at operators who have existing smart cards and have made the decision to move away from them.

Pretty much every transport authority has decided to drop their existing closed loop smart cards and instead move to ABT.

Both London and the Netherlands are currently in the process of getting rid of Oyster cards and OVChipkaart and moving completely over to ABT, with the Netherlands being further along.

The NTA are planning to do the same. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the NTA were going to keep existing Leap cards and backend systems around, that isn’t the case. There will of course be a transition period when both exist, but the plan is to scrap the old Leap cards and backend systems and move over completely to an ABT type system.

You should go read about OVPay in the Netherlands, it is basically exactly what will happen here over the next few years.

First they introduced basic use of debit cards to tap on and off. Now they recently added the ability to use debit cards with age based discounts, you just you the OVPay app, put in your age and picture and if your a child or over 65 you get a discount on your linked debit card.

The last step is they are introducing the new OVpas cards to replace OVchipkaart, the OVpas cards are of course behind the scenes a Mastercard, but they are closed loop, so you can’t use them in a shop, only on a bus, etc. these are aimed at people who don’t have or want bank accounts.

Once OVpas are rolled out and the OVchipkaart discontinued, then they will have completely gotten rid of their old ticketing system and replaced it with ABT.

London are going to do the same as will we here in Ireland, the old smart cards completely replaced by an ABT system.