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Why is there no digital leap card for digital wallets

antimatterx

Hi
I'm wondering why there isn't a leap card avaliable for Apple/Google wallets.

It's 2020, this technology isn't exactly complicated and we still have to carry physical cards. It would be nice to drop wallets completely.

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GT89 wrote: »

I think though the issue with tag on tag off is that it may slow down passengers getting off the bus instead of a steady flow of people getting off there will be some rooting around for their leap or contactless card in their bag/wallet whilst getting off. Also if drivers aren't attentive to it some may end up mussing their stop if the doors close before or whilst tagging off. It would be quite messy.

Obivously it works perfectly on the Luas where the tagging on/off is done at the stop rather than on board.

It also works perfectly on buses in Amsterdam. It is second nature to them, everyone has their card in hand and ready to go as they approach their stop. From what I could see, it looks to work extremely well there.

One thing to keep in mind, you don't have to tag-off, you only tag-off if you feel you should be paying less then the max fare.

That could work very well with our proposed two fare structure (a short fare and a 90 minute fare). Most people would be the higher 90 minute fare, so most people wouldn't bother tagging off.

Only the relatively small number of people looking for a short fare need to tag-off then and if they forget or don't care, then there isn't so much cost difference.

Actually I think this way could also work well even on single door buses. Rather then getting the short fare from the driver, just have them tag off when they are leaving the bus. It has the benefit of eliminating fare evasion. They only get the short fare if really entitled to it.

Not perfect of course, a completely flat fare would be best in terms of dwell time, but still MUCH better then the current setup.

goingnowhere wrote: »

But in all this its amazing the Germans don't do any of this rubbish, buy ticket on app or machine, stamp it and off you go. Amazing, need ZERO infrastructure, no NFC, no hassle with Apple etc. Just pay via the app

Yep, plus 3 or 4 days and entry/exit via any door. Such a great setup, the best really and what we should have done when they got rid of bus conductors. At least the Luas follows this model.

Of course, this model requires FAR more ticket inspectors. That is the trade off of less infrastructure, but IMO worth it very speedy bus service.

BTW I do wonder how enforcement works with the app based ticketing? Could a person just board and not buy a ticket unless they saw a ticket inspector board. Makes cheating easy.

I'm guessing it works because the ticket inspectors are normally "undercover" and watch for how long people are onboard and match it to a timestamp for when the ticket is bought.

markpb

OSI wrote: »

I've used my iPhone, Apple Watch and the CC they're both tied to within the same week on TfL and they've all fallen under the same weekly cap.

TfL advise is to use the same card/medium each time but I've had the same experience as you. I've a decent understanding of EMV and Digital Wallets/Tokenisation but I don't understand how TfL have access to the underlying fPAN to tie them all together. Maybe it's some exemption they agreed with the schemes.

OSI wrote: »

I've used my iPhone, Apple Watch and the CC they're both tied to within the same week on TfL and they've all fallen under the same weekly cap.

The TFL site seems to say differently:

https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/tube-and-rail-fares/pay-as-you-go-caps

You must touch in at start and touch out at the end of every journey, using the same contactless card, device or Oyster card. If you don't you may be charged a maximum fare.

If you use contactless, always use the same card or device. If you don't, we can't cap your fares. For example, if you pay with a mobile device on Monday and a contactless card on Tuesday, these fares won't count towards a weekly cap.

Do you perhaps have a TFL account and have registered your "Device Account Numbers" with it?

That might explain how the weekly cap from multiple devices would work. Though it leaves open a way for people to abuse it. You use your Apple Pay device and you give your debit card to another family member to use and both fall under the same daily/weekly cap.

You could use analytics's to look for patterns of abuse, but it would be far from perfect.

GT89

bk wrote: »

It also works perfectly on buses in Amsterdam. It is second nature to them, everyone has their card in hand and ready to go as they approach their stop. From what I could see, it looks to work extremely well there.

One thing to keep in mind, you don't have to tag-off, you only tag-off if you feel you should be paying less then the max fare.

That could work very well with our proposed two fare structure (a short fare and a 90 minute fare). Most people would be the higher 90 minute fare, so most people wouldn't bother tagging off.

Only the relatively small number of people looking for a short fare need to tag-off then and if they forget or don't care, then there isn't so much cost difference.

Actually I think this way could also work well even on single door buses. Rather then getting the short fare from the driver, just have them tag off when they are leaving the bus. It has the benefit of eliminating fare evasion. They only get the short fare if really entitled to it.

Not perfect of course, a completely flat fare would be best in terms of dwell time, but still MUCH better then the current setup.

Yep, plus 3 or 4 days and entry/exit via any door. Such a great setup, the best really and what we should have done when they got rid of bus conductors. At least the Luas follows this model.

Of course, this model requires FAR more ticket inspectors. That is the trade off of less infrastructure, but IMO worth it very speedy bus service.

BTW I do wonder how enforcement works with the app based ticketing? Could a person just board and not buy a ticket unless they saw a ticket inspector board. Makes cheating easy.

I'm guessing it works because the ticket inspectors are normally "undercover" and watch for how long people are onboard and match it to a timestamp for when the ticket is bought.

Really I think the easiest option to implement in Dublin would be the London system of a flat fare for all passengers with all cards and passes scanned at the one reader. The issue with this though is the subsidy the £1.50 bus hopper fare in London is very reasonable and TFL have been struggling financially because of it.

So such a fare would likely have to be quite heavily subsidised more so than at present. As some people may be put off travelling by bus if they had to pay higher fare to only go a short distance if say the flat fare was €2.50. However such users might be inclined to walk or cycle instead of using public transport freeing up capacity for those travelling longer distances.

The other problem with a tag on/off system is people may tag off shortly after they board and stay on the bus in order to pay the lower fare. This could be mitigated by only having the validators operate whilst the centre doors are open or by of course increasing the amount of revenue inspectors.

However if you do increase the amount of revenue protection you have to ask the question is the best use of money when you could move to a more efficient proof of payment payment with the potential for three door buses. The systems that impress me to the most when it comes to dwell times are the systems where validation is done whilst the bus is in MOTION. For example in Italy the bus simply stops picks up and disembarks passengers then gets moving again like a tram or a train.

dfx-

bk wrote: »

If they follow London's example (which they should), then you eliminate cash.

Your options then are a Leap card (can be unregistered/private) or contactless payment. That is how it is in London. Cash is too slow and has various cash handling issues.

There is no need to follow London. We could follow Birmingham where you don't tap in and out and can pay cash. We could think of something new for Dublin.

Really we should now have a flat fare through an app, contactless, Leap card, prepaid and cash. You can hear the cogs very slowly grinding forward in ticketing progress instead of at pace.

markpb

bk wrote: »

Do you perhaps have a TFL account and have registered your "Device Account Numbers" with it?

I didn’t and I can’t think how the average customer could find out the full value of their device PAN. Certainly on iOS you can only see the last four digits of it. I’m not sure about Android but I suspect it’s the same.

GT89

dfx- wrote: »

There is no need to follow London. We could follow Birmingham where you don't tap in and out and can pay cash. We could think of something new for Dublin.

Really we should now have a flat fare through an app, contactless, Leap card, prepaid and cash. You can hear the cogs very slowly grinding forward in ticketing progress instead of at pace.

Why take cash though? London dosen't require you to tap in and out just tap in once for a flat fare. Those that want to pay cash can still do by putting a fiver on a leap card.

dfx- wrote: »

There is no need to follow London. We could follow Birmingham where you don't tap in and out and can pay cash. We could think of something new for Dublin.

Really we should now have a flat fare through an app, contactless, Leap card, prepaid and cash. You can hear the cogs very slowly grinding forward in ticketing progress instead of at pace.

Why would we want to do that?!! It makes no sense. Cash has nothing but downsides:

- Slow boarding time, idiots looking for change in their purse, driver interaction, ticket needing to be printed off. It slows everything down.
- Cash handling charges, cash needs to be taken off buses every night, counted, etc.

London was absolutely correct to get rid of cash and it isn't just London, most major transit systems are going the same way. I'd suspect it is only a matter of time for Birmingham too.

markpb wrote: »

I didn’t and I can’t think how the average customer could find out the full value of their device PAN. Certainly on iOS you can only see the last four digits of it. I’m not sure about Android but I suspect it’s the same.

Yep, I would have thought the same, but perhaps the TFL app could read the ID from the device it is loaded on.

GT89

bk wrote: »

Why would we want to do that?!! It makes no sense. Cash has nothing but downsides:

- Slow boarding time, idiots looking for change in their purse, driver interaction, ticket needing to be printed off. It slows everything down.
- Cash handling charges, cash needs to be taken off buses every night, counted, etc.

London was absolutely correct to get rid of cash and it isn't just London, most major transit systems are going the same way. I'd suspect it is only a matter of time for Birmingham too.

Some places never even took cash to begin with. For example I was in Rome over 15 years ago and none of the buses accepted cash and that before contactless was a thing and before even smart card systems like Leap or Oyster were commonplace. Just go to the tobacconist and buy a travel 90 type ticket and stick it in one of the numerous yellow boxes located throughout a bus or tram. It's actually still the same system there now or at least last time I was there.

GT89 wrote: »

Some places never even took cash to begin with. For example I was in Rome over 15 years ago and none of the buses accepted cash and that before contactless was a thing and before even smart card systems like Leap or Oyster were commonplace. Just go to the tobacconist and buy a travel 90 type ticket and stick it in one of the numerous yellow boxes located throughout a bus or tram. It's actually still the same system there now or at least last time I was there.

Yep, that goes back more then 50 years and is very common in cities across Europe. Buy books of tickets in a shop, keep them in your bag and then valid one when you board.

We even had something somewhat like that with T90 and similar tickets here.

That is what is crazy about a lot of this stuff, lots of it isn't new, other mainland European cities been doing it for decades and with very little tech involved.

GT89

bk wrote: »

Yep, that goes back more then 50 years and is very common in cities across Europe. Buy books of tickets in a shop, keep them in your bag and then valid one when you board.

We even had something somewhat like that with T90 and similar tickets here.

That is what is crazy about a lot of this stuff, lots of it isn't new, other mainland European cities been doing it for decades and with very little tech involved.

I'm really not sure why it's taking them so long to get rid of cash. The elderly and disability groups can't complain as they're mostly on free travel anyhow. The only people I still see paying with cash are actually some younger people and some tourists.

The buses in Rome are actually awful as they are very unreliable, overcrowded and the buses themselves are generally old, filthy and covered in graffiti and window etchings I've also heard reports of numerous older vehicles catching fire but however the system of boarding and alighting is excellent.

Carawaystick

bk wrote: »

Yep, that goes back more then 50 years and is very common in cities across Europe. Buy books of tickets in a shop, keep them in your bag and then valid one when you board.

We even had something somewhat like that with T90 and similar tickets here.

That is what is crazy about a lot of this stuff, lots of it isn't new, other mainland European cities been doing it for decades and with very little tech involved.

How do people in the sticks on a 65 or 33 bus route get to the shop to get tickets?

Carawaystick wrote: »

How do people in the sticks on a 65 or 33 bus route get to the shop to get tickets?

The same way people living in rural parts on the outskirts of any European city do. They buy a large book of tickets when in the city/closest town/village and keep them at home.

thenightman

Carawaystick wrote: »

When I was getting the 33x at the Custom House, *Everybody* paid by card, and it still took 4-5 minutes to load up the full bus. Cash fares are not the reason for long dwell times.
If you have a season ticket you still need an id card, whether your phone has a ticket it or not.

I've an annual taxsaver leap about 5 years and have never had it checked to make sure it matches me. My photo & name is worn off anyway sure!

GT89

Carawaystick wrote: »

How do people in the sticks on a 65 or 33 bus route get to the shop to get tickets?

And what proportion of these users make up the overall DB ridership? I'd imagine it's a tiny fraction also considering the routes you mention are rather infrequent you'd people using them would be quite prepared knowing the bus times quite well if they can be that prepared surely they can be prepared enough to have a topped up Leap card or contactless card when that's an accepted means of payment.

From observing this discussion I find it amsuing we always here the following
What about people living the outer suburbs? How do people living in outer areas in every other European city that uses this system manage
What about tourists? See above and replace people living in the outer suburbs with the word tourists
What about the elderly/vulnerable? These generally have free travel passes anyway and see above this time replace with elderly/vulnerable

markpb

Carawaystick wrote: »

How do people in the sticks on a 65 or 33 bus route get to the shop to get tickets?

Are there no shops along those routes?

markpb

Carawaystick wrote: »

How do people in the sticks on a 65 or 33 bus route get to the shop to get tickets?

Are there no shops along those routes? We’re talking about Dublin Bus routes, let’s not exaggerate.

YellowBucket

Main reason is the technology has marched on very, very quickly and transit systems have a lot of expensive technology in terms of card readers and systems behind them.

Leap was planned well over a decade ago and was state of the art at the time.

We’ve gone from a situation where most people didn’t have useful debit cards / credit cards and to one where in a short space of time the banks moved to EMV and contactless and then to one where a large part of the population can pay with their watches and smartphones. That’s happened in a very short time scale.

Some transit systems have pushed ahead with mobile payments, most haven’t. I don’t think Leap is particularly low tech by comparison to what I’ve used elsewhere. It’s middle of the road average level of tech by European standards.

What concerns me more here is the lack of simple ticketing and the cumbersome one door entry and exit approach on buses.

It should be possible to scan your card at multiple points on all busses and trams and have all door entry / exit.

We’ve stupid dwell times, and it’s worse in the cities using Bus Éireann services as they’re still accepting payment in cash and giving change. It’s ludicrous somewhere like Cork where you’ve very busy city bus routes and busses taking an age to depart from stops, often obstructing other road users and delaying the service itself too as passengers keep paying with cash and expecting change.

You shouldn’t need to pay the driver at all. Should simply be card readers scattered around the bus, as is the norm on the continent.

Those kinds of issues need to be addressed urgently. Any kind of transit contactless payment be it the existing Leap card or mobile payments is only the nuts and bolts. It’s the broader picture of how the system knits together and works that lets us down here.

loyatemu

markpb wrote: »

Are there no shops along those routes? We’re talking about Dublin Bus routes, let’s not exaggerate.

also where are they getting their exact change from if they live in the countryside and never visit a shop?

I had assumed Carawaystick question was related to the old European style of buying books of tickets.

Obviously it wouldn't be an issue with the new approach and Leap.

1) Currently you can order a leap card online and it gets posted to you with credit on it. You can topup online or better yet, turn on auto-topup

2) In future, when they enable contactless payments, simply use your contactless debit card. Anyone with a bank account has one or you can easily get one from Revolut/N26 or similar preload debit cards you can get from various places.

YellowBucket wrote: »

Main reason is the technology has marched on very, very quickly and transit systems have a lot of expensive technology in terms of card readers and systems behind them.

Leap was planned well over a decade ago and was state of the art at the time.

Well the ticket machines used on the buses differently weren't state of the art. Even 10 years ago, when they first started rolling them out, they were already years out of date.

The lack of memory and processing power on the ticket machines seems to certainly caused extreme issues for the Leap project and need replacing to move forward.

YellowBucket wrote: »

What concerns me more here is the lack of simple ticketing and the cumbersome one door entry and exit approach on buses.

It should be possible to scan your card at multiple points on all busses and trams and have all door entry / exit.

This is the main problem with Leap, I agree with you it isn't really the technology. Rather it is the broken fare system and bus operating process.

It is a pretty common issue with government projects. You have a broken system/process and they try and put technology ontop of the broken system, hoping it will fix the underlying issues, which of course it doesn't at all. If anything it can make it worse.

Ideally you need to fix the underlying issues first, before you add the tech or at least fix the issues at the same time you add the tech.

The Leap project made the sin of doing nothing to fix the underlying issues. It was just layered on the same old broken fare system, driver interaction, single door operation.

When I think about the Next Generation Ticketing project, I don't just think about it in terms of mobile ticketing, etc. I think about it in terms of the entire ticketing and bus process. Moving to a flat fare, driverless tag-on, no cash, multi-door operation, along with contactless payments. And I hope the folks at the NTA have learned their lessons from the Leap project and see it in the same way.

Really we should have fixed the root problems decades ago. We should have already moved to the flat fare system when DB was looking to do that and further back, when they got rid of the conductor, we should have moved to the Luas/German style, multiple door, validate ticket on-board, no driver interaction model with ticket inspectors.

YellowBucket wrote: »

We’ve stupid dwell times, and it’s worse in the cities using Bus Éireann services as they’re still accepting payment in cash and giving change. It’s ludicrous somewhere like Cork where you’ve very busy city bus routes and busses taking an age to depart from stops, often obstructing other road users and delaying the service itself too as passengers keep paying with cash and expecting change.

Oh god, don't get me started about BE in Cork. It shows the stupidity of it all, that Cork city is a flat fare, but even with a Leap card you still have to interact with the driver, it is actually slower then on DB, looks like the driver has to click three or so buttons.

No right hand validator. People with leap cards in Cork should just be beep on at the right hand validator with no interaction with the driver. So stupid and been going on for years now!!

YellowBucket wrote: »

Those kinds of issues need to be addressed urgently. Any kind of transit contactless payment be it the existing Leap card or mobile payments is only the nuts and bolts. It’s the broader picture of how the system knits together and works that lets us down here.

I agree, but it doesn't look like we are heading to the Luas/Continental style of operation for buses.

Instead the model we look to be heading too is the London Bus style model. Flat fare, tag-on, no driver interaction, board via the front door, exit via the rear door.

I don't think it is as nice as the Continental style, but would still be MUCH better then the current mess.

Carawaystick

markpb wrote: »

Are there no shops along those routes? We’re talking about Dublin Bus routes, let’s not exaggerate.

Its over 14km from Aldi in Blessington to the petrol station near the Citywest junction on the N81.

Carawaystick wrote: »

Its over 14km from Aldi in Blessington to the petrol station near the Citywest junction on the N81.

As I mentioned it certainly wouldn't be an issue with Leap. Just order a leap card online, it gets posted to you or use the debit card you already have or order a revolut one and get it delivered to you.

As others have mentioned, how does a person like this get cash in the first place to pay for a bus ride? You get the cash from either a shop, bank, ATM or post office.

Leap/debit cards would actually be easier.

galwaytt

I wouldn't get wound up about it: PTSB don't allow Google Pay or Apple Pay on their cards anyway, so even if DB enable their end, the bank won't. Not sure if any other banks are the same.

p_haugh

galwaytt wrote: »

I wouldn't get wound up about it: PTSB don't allow Google Pay or Apple Pay on their cards anyway, so even if DB enable their end, the bank won't. Not sure if any other banks are the same.

Same case with Bank of Ireland *sigh*

CatInABox

p_haugh wrote: »

Same case with Bank of Ireland *sigh*

Not so much "won't" as "can't". They're currently reaping the harvest for not investing a cent into their IT systems for decades. Not sure about PTSB, but BOI are in dire straights with their IT.

Amirani

galwaytt wrote: »

I wouldn't get wound up about it: PTSB don't allow Google Pay or Apple Pay on their cards anyway, so even if DB enable their end, the bank won't. Not sure if any other banks are the same.

You don't need Google Pay or Apple Pay, you just need a card with contactless payments. It's hard to get one without contactless these days.

antimatterx

CatInABox wrote: »

Not so much "won't" as "can't". They're currently reaping the harvest for not investing a cent into their IT systems for decades. Not sure about PTSB, but BOI are in dire straights with their IT.

How bad are BOI?

It might be a good opportunity for some contractors to make bank.

CatInABox

antimatterx wrote: »

How bad are BOI?

It might be a good opportunity for some contractors to make bank.

Oh yeah, you're not the only one to think of that:

Bank of Ireland bosses fight to rein in tech bill (paywall alert)

A €500 million project is looking at coming in at €2 billion. I actually think that they pressed pause on it there last year, which comes with it's own problems, and I can't imagine that COVID is helping them.

Dravokivich

When I used to do work with them, they were transitioning from NT4, to WinXP, at a time when other organisations were transitioning to Win7. They had a high dependency on legacy solutions, because the stuff they were using was developed in-house. I'd imagine their concern with "scope creep" is more to do with SAAS and licensing costs.

I can understand why they'd be slow to progress with IT, when a lot of financial companies would have dove in agressively in the 80's, for it to be archaic by the 90's. They need to learn from the position they left themselves in 10 years ago and make their IT adaptable and easier to expand. It seems they didn't.

To be clear, both PTSB and BOI have contactless debit/ATM and credit cards. So if/when Leap implement contactless payments, your existing PTSB/BOI debt cards will just work with it by holding the card to the card reader when entering the bus/Luas, etc.

Mobile payments (Apple Pay, etc.) are an additional feature on top of contactless payments, that yes, PTSB/BOI will need to eventually support, but it wouldn't be a stopper for Leap, you would still have other options (e.g. use your physical card).

BTW AIB/KBC/Ulsterbank/Revolut/N26 all already support both contactless debit/credit cards AND mobile payments (Apple Pay, etc).

Of course if the NTA decided to also support you putting your Leap card in your Apple/Google Wallet, then you could use that instead of your PTSB/BOI cards for mobile payment.

Of course the above is all dependent on where the NTA decides to go with Leap.