legend99 wrote: » I always thought a major aim of a Smart Card for transport was to help speed up the loading of passengers. I find it incredible that Leap has actually slowed it down. You still have to tell the driver your destination so he knows what fare to charge. She/He then, it appears to me, has to set the machine to charge that much, and the card takes upwards of 5-8 seconds to give it the okay?
Thelonious Monk wrote: » Can you not tag on and tag off Dublin buses and it charges you appropriately? Why arent there flat fares like in most places?
Thelonious Monk wrote: » are there any plans to just scan your phone or bank card like it is in London and everywhere else these days? Leap technology must be 20 years old at this stage.
coylemj wrote: » I always declare the fare so the driver doesn't have to work out anything, all he has to do is press the second button to deduct €2.25 which is what I usually pay when I interact with the driver. The delay you're describing is principally caused by the time it takes the driver's machine to read the card. I have often seen him with his finger over the €2.25 button, waiting for the machine to read my card to verify the balance.
bk wrote: » I do the same in Dublin, just say €2.25. But in Cork it is even slower! You have the same wait for the machine to read the card, but then the driver looks like they have to press 3 buttons or so, even though on most routes in cork it is a flat fare
Vic_08 wrote: » This may have changed since I used them, but it sounds like they haven't. The delay is primarily down to the machines looking for a valid ticket, failing to find one, displaying a message to that effect and then switching to the ticket from e-purse page. This can be shortcutted by the driver by pressing a button BEFORE the card is presented which immediately presents the fare deduction menu but if that is done and the passenger is just validating a period ticket it won't validate, just wait for the driver to deduct a fare. In that case the card needs to be removed and re-scanned after the machine resets. Drivers can try to question the passenger before they preesent their Leap card but that takes as long and some passengers assume the driver is being bolshie and take the hump, eventually the drivers just give up and let the rubbish TIMs do their ponderous thing. It was explained many times to the developers by the drivers who initially trialled the leap implementation that requiring the passenger to state their ticketing requirements before presenting the card was stupid and impractical but of course the highly paid IT graduates knew better. We had already been through it with the introduction of those crap Wayfarer TGX 150s, the machines were poor and ancient when BE bought them but the implementation was unnecessarily awful to use, if the input of drivers had been sought and taken on board before programming them then they would have been significantly quicker and easier to use. Even something as ridiculously simple as the machine remaining in the same menu was too much trouble for them to implement, so you had the situation where to issue the same ticket to a long queue of passengers would require multiple button presses to display the correct ticket for each passenger as the machine would automatically revert to the base menu 5 seconds after each issue, if you tried to beat the timer and pressed it as it was reverting it could issue the ticket you wanted or the wrong one so you would have to take the ticket yourself and check it was the correct one. That is only scratching the surface of how bad those machines are.
legend99 wrote: » I don't envy any driver dealing with that. In Cork the load time of buses is crazy. It is beyond inefficient. I really don't understand why someone can't just analyse say ten cities and take the best of each and build that here.
Peregrine wrote: » A new ticketing platform for Expressway including contactless, Google Pay and Apple Pay launched today. The contract was awarded to Turnit mid last year. The NTA are still 18 months away from awarding their contract.
bk wrote: » Great that Expressway is now offering this. .
Mrs OBumble wrote: » However introducing it at the same time as removing through ticketing from non-expressway services could have some interesting consequences. It's now impossible to buy a Bus Eireann ticket that involves any change of bus on their website. Even if both buses are PSO.
Xterminator wrote: » you cannot buy a ticket on swords express or matthews coaches that allows you to use the luas etc. Who would you expect BE to operate differently?
Greenlights16 wrote: » Disappointing but not surprising in 2021 ireland that the two leap card apps on the App Store for iPhone are a complete shambles. Wont even let you log in or else crashes despite re downloading and deleting multiple times. Can you top it up online? Or do you literally have to go to a machine or something? “ Apple has protected the use of its NFC chip and has prevented its use by third parties.” some cop out
bk wrote: » Both of those apps on the Apple App store are third party apps and have no relationship with the NTA/Leap. When you give these apps your password, they are behind the scenes using your password to log into the Leap card website and basically screen scrapping out the data. You are basically trusting your password, data and privacy to a third party and you have no guarantee that it will continue to work. If it breaks, it isn't Leap/NTA's fault. There is an official app on Android that can actually read the card and top it up directly using NFC on phones that have NFC. Until recently this wasn't possible on iPhones as Apple stopped apps from using the NFC on the iPhone. They recently removed this restriction and supposedly the NTA are supposed to be working on a similar app for the iPhone, though it hasn't launched yet.
bk wrote: » Great that Expressway is now offering this. But Aircoach has been offering the same ticketing options for more then a year and a half now, what took BE so long?! Also NTA actually awarded a contract to Cubic Systems back in 2019 for a similar mobile ticketing system for commuter PSO routes and actually started trialling it on the 133 mid last year:https://www.thejournal.ie/nta-mobile-ticketing-app-5169192-Aug2020/ However I suspect it's rollout has been delayed due to Payzone suing the NTA in the high court over the contract:https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/arid-31008177.html I wonder does anyone know how that court case is going? If you mean the next generation leap card, well that is something very different to the above and vastly more complicated. All of the above are pretty simple evolutions on the existing ticketing systems. They still require driver interaction, either asking the driver to buy a ticket and then offering your contactless card to pay for it rather then cash or buying a ticket on your phone first and showing the driver your ticket on the phone as you board. All not that different from the past, just a contactless or mobile, rather then cash or a printed ticket/email. This is good that these are happening, these are suitable technologies for long range intercity and commuter type services. However the next gen leap project is a whole different kettle of fish. It is aimed at short distance mass transit services. It needs to be rolled out across Dublin Bus, GAI, Luas, DART, BE city services, etc. Unlike the above options, the goal would be to eliminate driver interaction. It needs to correctly handle capping, transfers, etc. Technically speaking, it is a vastly more complicated project. I too am annoyed at how long it is taking, but it isn't at all comparable to the above MyExpress ticketing system.
Mr.S wrote: » The new iOS they are testing at the moment is great, a godsend for topping up now. I think it’s releasing relatively soon as the beta version currently being tested is very stable.
Sam the Sham wrote: » It's out now and works well. What I don't understand is why we have to top up physical cards when the phone itself is perfectly capable of functioning as a travel card (as is the case in many other jurisdictions).
antimatterx wrote: » I'd love to dump my physical wallet. You should be able to have bank cards, travel cards, access cards and ID (passport etc) on a digital wallet. It's not hard to implement.
markpb wrote: » Most other cities that let you pay by phone use Contactless EMV, the same as using your phone as a debit card in a shop. To achieve that, every Leap validator, every DART turnstile and every DB ticket machine would need to be replaced with EMV certified hardware. Then the entire back office would need to be replaced. I’m sure it’ll happen eventually but it’ll be very expensive and take time.
markpb wrote: » It might be possible to write an app that embeds a Leap card inside the phone but no one is going to do that on Android because it lacks an SE like the iPhone. And then Apple’s security restrictions around the use of the NFC chipset would stop you.
breezy1985 wrote: » I don't understand this app. Is it only for the 10 journey ticket ? I can't seem to do anything else on it
p_haugh wrote: » I assume this is the TFI Go app you're talking about. They initially only have 10 journey tickets available, but I believe it is planned to eventually roll out more ticket types and open it up to more operators.
Could not find the other thread about this, so I'll post it here as it is still relevant - bit of an update on the status with mobile/contactless payments (along with a potential virtual leap card):
