[HN Gopher] Reversing UK mobile rail tickets
___________________________________________________________________
Reversing UK mobile rail tickets
Author : 076ae80a-3c97-4
Score : 449 points
Date : 2023-02-03 12:55 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (eta.st)
(TXT) w3m dump (eta.st)
| timthorn wrote:
| The photo of a UK train ticket is very interesting. Reading Green
| Park station isn't yet open, AFAIK:
| https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/RGP/details.html
| Symbiote wrote:
| I'd guess you've discovered the train nerd Easter egg of the
| article.
| nly wrote:
| The price on the ticket is also PS1.90M
| odiroot wrote:
| Which is weird because the minimal fare is PS2.20 now.
| turnerc wrote:
| I believe the minimum fare is the price before any
| discounts applied, a railcard on 1.90 would be a normal
| price of ~PS2.84
| [deleted]
| arp242 wrote:
| It usually has an "X" suffix. I'm not sure what the "M"
| stands for; maybe to mark it as a specimen?
| michaelhoffman wrote:
| X means you paid with a credit card.
|
| M means you paid with cash ("money").
| [deleted]
| lol768 wrote:
| Seemingly purchased at a Paddington TVM? I'm surprised they
| allow purchasing that far in advance.
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| Coincidentally I started scanning Sao Paulo metro ticket QR codes
| (if someone feels like reversing it)
|
| <q:01> s:196;u:296101284;i:14;c:JP4igg/YIyk03lYqnVcjFCQjDldUc7Th8
| 2Gjppb89S8I0vlCNIAYpzBgUESmeKmaaf2BHvlkuyd3opXXwEWsujuGqqakb09xrY
| WVlBeqY97qfwE1bynzs9FbGmG6HxnVmpM6AHROTBZa08ti/0KiR1oyKpZkrucBE9d
| JsJtz0qg=;x:49;
|
| <q:01> s:196;u:297172367;i:14;c:pirqKynzF6wa7ttQJRtw8B5SfcQiWL5ps
| Ewju5OVjxLwG7hZKgJsii381A0l9hzcxsebxUJrK6Z1ZX22ILd/AMYOSx2DuQ2OHq
| rP5r8sNuVfMATrYOTbcioISrn/dBLN1vaQxEmZkTxLkE9837NGvsrlP7mF+BWYps3
| jqA/MfG0=;x:25;
| iudqnolq wrote:
| They invented a clever decentralized system based on public key
| cryptography, but it seems like they actually need centralized
| features. So they bolted some on, leaving an end result worse off
| than if they'd started with something simple and centralized.
|
| For example, you can ask any UK rail operator to book you a trip
| that includes sections run by other operators. So your purchase
| needs to be fed through a centralized revenue-splitting system
| (called LENNON iirc) anyway.
|
| Then they got the feature request that you should be able to book
| specific seats and someone else shouldn't be able to book the
| same seat, and so on. This just can't be decentralized.
|
| This setup does have the advantage that they can check tickets
| without needing a network connection, but I'd guess there would
| be simpler ways to add that to a centralized system.
| bombcar wrote:
| You could in theory make it decentralized-ish depending on the
| requirements. For example they could allocate blocks of seats
| to vendors and if you bought one of those seats you could buy
| it "offline" to be synced later.
|
| But it's probably not worth the hassle and once the ticket is
| sold you can have it be signed by the centralized system so you
| can verify the signature offline easily.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| I don't think that theory works out in practice because they
| have not that many seats in the trains, a lot of vendors,
| vendors that book very small and irregular numbers of tickets
| on routes, and sometimes very few or no extra seats. So you'd
| need to reallocate the blocks by demand quite frequently, at
| which point it's morally a shitty centralized system.
|
| And with every clever decentralized solution there's another
| feature request that adds more complexity. I just remembered
| some trains have displays above seats that tell you if it's
| reserved.
| krisoft wrote:
| > So they bolted some on, leaving an end result worse off than
| if they'd started with something simple and centralized.
|
| I disagree.
|
| > This setup does have the advantage that they can check
| tickets without needing a network connection
|
| This is the most important reason why it is implemented this
| way. Checking happens on rowing handheld devices which have
| frequently no good internet connection. Even in the turnstiles
| where you would think they could afford a reliable connection
| if said connection goes down you can't block the flow of
| people.
|
| Reliability and speed of checking was clearly the most
| important features they optimised for. Security, in the sense
| that passengers can't just mint tickets for themselces, is a
| close second.
|
| The beauty is that every centralised reporting can be deffered.
| In case the centralised database is down, or the checker's
| network is down, you just store the timestamp and the signed
| ticket data and report it once things are working again. The
| centralised system doesn't even need to trust the checker
| computers. Railway company A cannot mint a ticket from railway
| company B. They don't have the keys to do that. So they cannot
| fraudelently divert revenue from each other. Neither
| accidentally nor intentionally.
|
| > but I'd guess there would be simpler ways to add that to a
| centralized system.
|
| I'm all ears. How would you do it simpler?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Centralized ticket server. QR tickets consist of a counter
| and signature.
|
| Train companies have a login to the ticket server to let them
| mint tickets.
|
| Checkers, when offline just check the signature, and log to
| the central server later.
|
| When online, they ask the central server for all other ticket
| details and check those.
|
| Any ticket that is misused and isn't detected at the time is
| blacklisted, and that blacklist distributed for offline use.
| A blacklist of the 10 million most-misused tickets could
| perhaps be just 10 megabytes - easy to download/update every
| few hours over mobile internet.
|
| Now, anyone can wrongly use a ticket just once, as long as
| they are sure the checker is offline. And if they are
| mistaken and the checker is online, or they reuse a ticket,
| they will get caught.
|
| main benefit: tickets can be smaller (and therefore read far
| quicker). Tickets can also be cancelled easily. For example,
| train companies could send out promotional tickets which only
| charge you _if used_ , and are cancelled otherwise.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> they also gain the ability to more precisely track the
| ticket's usage across the network and minimise fraud._
|
| Except mobile tickets make fraud trivial - getting off the train
| without a ticket, at a station with a ticket barrier? Just show
| them your powered off phone and say 'my phone died' and they'll
| let you out, no questions asked.
| astrange wrote:
| NFC works on phones even if the battery is dead, as long as
| it's set as an express card. (Doesn't work if it's /really/
| dead, but just hit 0% that day is fine.)
| nprateem wrote:
| It's your responsibility to produce a ticket. Claiming your dog
| ate it or whatever will just mean they make you buy a new
| ticket and apply for a refund if you find your original again.
| They've heard these things before.
| michaelt wrote:
| So you say - but I've repeatedly seen people allowed to exit
| through the ticket barriers at my local train station with
| nothing but a powered off phone as a 'ticket'
| ghaff wrote:
| And arguably that's a reasonable response from a policy
| perspective so long as a small minority of people are
| actively grifting.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| Sure, there exists an element of discretion, but it's not
| an official exemption so the parent comment still stands
| correct.
| Shaanie wrote:
| Sure, but presumably because it's not worth the effort to
| verify rather than an inability to do so, no?
|
| If their priorities change, claiming your phone is out of
| battery seems unlikely to allow you to avoid a fine.
| nly wrote:
| Exactly. It's not like with paper tickets it was any
| different. If you lost your paper ticket they would either
| shrug and let you out, or fine you on the spot and let you
| cancel the fine if you can find and produce the lost ticket
| later.
|
| Of course, I suppose in 2023 you can always say you have no
| way to pay the fine without your phone...
| odiroot wrote:
| That won't work with the controllers inside the train.
| lozenge wrote:
| Do that five days a week and they will start recognising you!
| tsujamin wrote:
| The bit at the end regarding the unauthenticated anti-fraud
| database of trips reminds me of bus tickets in a couple of
| australian states, which (locally on the 13MHz MFC cards) store a
| short rolling log of your most recent trips.
|
| Not as bad as a public API, but probably some degree of a
| personal safety risk given the security around MFC cards and the
| ability to ascertain pattern-of-life from the data
| lmz wrote:
| Those are useful for ticket inspectors and also for
| troubleshooting issues e.g. if the fare gate won't let you out.
| tsujamin wrote:
| No ticket inspectors in play, but it's roughly a COTS system
| so makes sense I guess
| renewiltord wrote:
| Nice stuff. As a user, this stuff is way simpler. I buy the
| ticket on train line and get a qr code that scans and I'm on the
| train.
| arnon wrote:
| Very nicely written, it made it very accessible to those who
| aren't super familiar with reverse engineering.
|
| I'm fascinated by "transport billing" - it's such a complex
| problem, owing to the different infrastructure providers,
| different operators, fares, holidays, special events, and weird
| edge-case situations.
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| This reminds me of the time when I was a college student in
| Massachusetts and would always try to reverse-engineer the
| Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority tickets, powered by
| JustRide (oh! Just noticed it's the same company as in the
| article)
|
| Unfortunately, my skills weren't quite there at that point in my
| life, and I no longer live in Massachusetts, but this was an
| incredible read regardless and I feel at least a bit of closure
| now :)
|
| The MBTA tickets had an option of color bars (so the conductors
| could just visually check if all of them match throughout all the
| passengers) and a QR option, so I would always try to figure out
| how it generates those colors, as the tickets had to be able to
| function offline, and as the tickets all showed the same colors
| regardless of passenger, they certainly weren't unique per-
| purchase nor used any user-unique info (though they may have been
| unique per-train-route).
|
| I should take another look at it with this article as a resource.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| I think the tickets had to be activated 'online', and iirc they
| are good for 60 minutes.
|
| Additionally the color bar screen has an animated timestamp
| too, presumably to prevent a (basic) screenshot attack.
|
| And; although I've never had it scanned, I think if the ticket
| checker suspects something is up, they scan the qrcode for an
| online verification.
|
| I took a large family group with me on one ride, and they did
| consistently check that I activated the right number of
| tickets.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| On the Florida Turnpike it was always too expensive for many
| students when they traveled up and down the state.
|
| It was bad enough having captive service stations and restaurants
| for overpriced products, but the toll was and still is ridiculous
| too, considering it was agreed there would be no toll after the
| construction was paid for, And it was well paid for decades ago.
|
| Anyway there were only very few exits and they were mostly rural
| until you got to South Florida where you could get off and on
| every few miles. The captive service stations needeed to be built
| at the same time as the Turnpike or everybody would run out of
| gas back then.
|
| Except Orlando which was a very small city before Disney came in,
| but their gas stations were still closed late at night and on
| Sunday.
|
| Tickets were reverse engineered in a completely analog way.
|
| The "main entrance" to the Turnpike coming south was out in the
| middle of nowhere where the I-75 freeway keeps going to Tampa but
| you smoothly get over to the main gates of the Turnpike if you
| want to head down to Miami instead. You would just breeze on
| through and pick up a ticket at the northernmost gate, and the
| further you traveled south, the more toll you would have to pay
| when you got off.
|
| Students would get off of I-75 avoiding the Turnpike and drive on
| the rural roads about a half-hour until you get to the next
| Turnpike entrance and pick up a (very valuable) ticket there
| instead of at the main entrance to the north.
|
| As you got down toward the Palm Beach area, where the
| northbounders and southbounders still shared the gas stations and
| restaurants in the central plazas, many northbound travelers
| would willingly trade tickets from wherever they got on in South
| Florida for one which will only cost them as much as if they got
| on at the very last chance before hitting the northernmost exit.
|
| Northbounders would then get off right where they were going to
| anyway, one exit away from where we got on, and we would get off
| one exit away from where they got on, and everybody came out
| ahead, paying the minimum tolls possible.
|
| It took a long time before any toll-takers started looking at the
| tickets and asking "why did it take 6 hours to only go one exit?"
| andrepd wrote:
| >tolls are expensive
|
| Well do you know what's expensive? Highways. In the US less
| than 20c of every dollar come from road tax/fuel tax/tolls. The
| rest is paid by taxpayers, whether or not they use those roads,
| whether or not they drive, whether they drive a 3.5 ton SUV or
| a 1 ton "small" car. This is not even getting into the terrible
| externalities that car use entails.
|
| Personal automobiles pay far too little.
|
| >tolls should cease after initial amount is paid
|
| A good ballpark is every ~30 years you spend, in maintenance,
| the same amount of money it took to build it in the first
| place.
| reustle wrote:
| I used to live in the US and currently live in Japan. We pay
| around $95 to go about 5 hours on a highway from Tokyo to
| Kyoto, for example. 3~ hours north is about $35. I think this
| more accurately charges us drivers for the resources we
| consume.
| kevinh456 wrote:
| What's the condition of the road like? I assume that it is
| immaculate.
| reustle wrote:
| I also ride motorcycles here. They're fantastic.
| dandy23 wrote:
| It's similar in France, maybe half that number though. It's a
| good system. The one's who use the highways pay for them. The
| highways are in a very good state in France.
| VK538FY wrote:
| The relatively high fees on French autoroutes are offset by
| the good quality, yes. But the principal objection may be
| the way in which said autoroutes were privatized after
| being built with public money, no?
| ornornor wrote:
| Yes but it was long ago and people forgot. But yes,
| French citizens are paying for the autoroutes twice:
| built with public money and then again with tolls to use
| them.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| Sure, you may multiple times but they don't just get
| built once either. There is non-stop maintenance for a
| road system.
| iso1631 wrote:
| There's maintenence in local roads too. And maintence is
| broadly relative to the damage caused, which is relative
| to the 4th power of axel weight. A 30 ton truck will
| cause thousands of times the damage of a 2 ton car, but
| doesn't pay thousands of times the price.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Presumably the privatisation process involved the
| transfer of cash from the companies buying them to the
| government, and hopefully that was more than the cost of
| construction.
| paganel wrote:
| It also adds to the price of food that gets transported from
| one place to another, and, as such, acts as a regressive tax
| on people who pay the biggest part of their income on their
| basic needs (like food). That's one of the main reasons why I
| don't get the "death to cars!" movement and why I regard it
| as mostly middle-class privileged discourse: no cars means
| fewer or worst roads, means food being a lot more expensive.
| erpellan wrote:
| A truck can carry 10 or 20 times more cargo than a car. The
| truck toll is not 20x more.
|
| The movement to reduce car use is about replacing them with
| better alternatives such as efficient local public
| transport and high speed rail, not going back to travelling
| on horseback.
| paganel wrote:
| > The truck toll is not 20x more.
|
| Yes, that was my exact point. The car owners (of which
| I'm one) subsidise cheaper food for many not car-owners
| (many of them, presumably, poorer people) by paying more
| expensive road tolls relative to our vehicles' sizes. And
| that's good.
|
| Make road toll for trucks commensurate to the real wear
| they're adding to the roads then you're increasing the
| price of food (by increasing the cost of transporting
| said food), hence you're making it harder for poorer
| people.
| tjoff wrote:
| That's a very roundabout way to justify it though. How
| much would toll really affect food prices per person?
|
| And is there really no other way to offset that?
| paganel wrote:
| > How much would toll really affect food prices per
| person?
|
| Transportation costs (of which toll costs are a
| reasonable part, my brother is a lorry driver, I would
| know) are a big part of food costs, what's "roundabout"
| about it? That's how the economy works, that's how
| putting food on people's tables works.
|
| > And is there really no other way to offset that?
|
| No, one cannot offset it that by whooshing it way or by
| creating a clever phone app for it. This is real life,
| not Silicon Valley-make believe. People's lives depend on
| this, on the price of food, that is.
| snordgren wrote:
| Road transport of goods accounts for a majority of wear on
| the roads. Rail is naturally more cumbersome because
| railroads are less ubiquitous than roads, but it is much
| more efficient in terms of both energy usage and labor.
|
| If we subsidize road transport by letting tax payers or
| commuters pay for their road wear and tear, we end up with
| more road transport at the cost of more labor and more
| energy use. That's deadweight loss caused by the government
| distorting the market with road subsidies.
|
| Road transport should be used where its flexibility gives
| it a competitive advantage, not be the default because
| taxpayers subsidize it.
|
| One way to compensate lower-income earners for higher food
| prices is to lower taxes for those with low incomes, making
| the tax rate more progressive. Another is to reduce VAT for
| basic needs products like food.
| astrange wrote:
| Wouldn't say food is especially expensive in Japan or that
| they don't have enough roads.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| I was also going to mention Japan. All highways are tolled
| and Japan also has virtually zero street parking, and free
| parking is mostly limited to private lots owned by stores. Of
| course, the more rural a place you go, the less this
| generalization is true.
|
| Even if you already own a car, it is in general more
| expensive, inconvenient and maybe even slower to choose to
| drive to work. As a general rule of thumb, driving long
| distances costs about the same as taking the shinkansen for
| one person, is slower and makes more sense once you have 3+
| people in the car.
|
| I think overall this is fair and leads to much better
| outcomes than US-style "it's my right to drive and park for
| free where ever I go, but I will fight any proposal to
| improve or subsidize transit because 'my taxes!'".
| andrepd wrote:
| Hit the nail on the head. If only my country followed that
| model x)
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| "Reverse engineering" is where you learn something about how a
| system works, especially nonpublic information.
|
| What you described doesn't have anything nonpublic or learned
| facts. Instead, it's a cooperation to fool someone into not
| having to pay for service. I'm not sure if it could even be
| called "cracking", since that typically involves learning new
| facts, too. Only "exploiting" comes to mind.
| gadders wrote:
| >>but the toll was and still is ridiculous too, considering it
| was agreed there would be no toll after the construction was
| paid for, And it was well paid for decades ago.
|
| Same with the QE2 bridge in the UK. Governments are disgusting.
|
| https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/dartford-crossing...
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > And it was well paid for decades ago.
|
| What happens when you build a road and declare it done and
| then never deal with it again? Does it continue to work as a
| road after a few years?
|
| > Governments are disgusting.
|
| Who builds roads?
| HyperSane wrote:
| Toll roads are stupid.
| Symbiote wrote:
| There was a discussion on a different post pointing out that
| maintenance of a highway is still very costly. Charging only
| the users, rather than all taxpayers, appears very fair.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Depends if you think roads should be run as a public service,
| free to all at the point of use, and paid for by all
| according to their means, or a private service (with or
| without profit).
|
| Do you also think the same about parks? Or schools? Or
| police? Or healthcare? Or water? Or rail? Or defence?
| slavboj wrote:
| Infrastructure provides public benefits way in excess of the
| private benefit to the users, which is why roads have been
| public projects for millennia. People generally travel on
| roads to get somewhere and do something, and given increased
| state capacity, that thing is overwhelmingly likely to be
| taxable.
|
| Toll roads are a holdover from times of reduced state
| capacity when the best and only way to tax something was to
| force it to go through a physical chokepoint.
| userabchn wrote:
| If the thing they use the infrastructure to do is actually
| valuable, then they can just add the cost of the toll to
| what they charge for doing it. Splitting the cost of
| building and maintaining infrastructure among users is, I
| believe, the fairest way, and helps to avoid market
| distortions.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Superficially maybe, but it's much more complicated than
| that. When an efficient public transport exists between two
| places there are derivative economic benefits all round, a
| larger pool of employees for businesses in A, more demand for
| housing in B etc.
| dmurray wrote:
| Charging by road use definitely seems fair, but it's a
| problem when you have 50 major roads in the state and by
| historical accident only say 2 of them get tolled. North-
| South travellers end up subsidising East-West travellers or
| vice versa.
|
| It's hard to come up with a perfectly fair system. Tolling
| every road is expensive and tax on fuel has its own trade
| offs.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Maybe, except it's a regressive tax.
|
| They don't call HOV/toll lanes "Lexus Lanes" for nothing.
| mattigames wrote:
| As much as charging only the victims of crimes to pay for
| police expenses rather than all taxpayers appears very fair.
| borski wrote:
| So you never get anything delivered on a FedEx or ups truck?
| And you don't receive mail?
| Symbiote wrote:
| Since I live on the Danish island of Zealand, everything
| transported from more than about 150km away has paid a toll
| of some kind -- either the bridge toll from the rest of
| Denmark (and thence Germany), the bridge/tunnel toll to
| Sweden, or the ferry to Germany.
|
| I'm fine with that. FedEx's lorry will pay 960DKK (EUR130)
| to cross the bridge, and they will add that price to the
| price of delivery.
| gambiting wrote:
| Exactly - you benefit from infrastructure existing, even if
| you personally don't drive on every single road in the
| country.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Shipping services are not free? FedEx/UPS pay the tolls,
| and the shipping fees I pay should reimburse them for that.
| bboygravity wrote:
| I've lived in countries with and without toll.
|
| I feel the no toll approach is better.
|
| Most importantly because no toll means (the feeling of) more
| privacy, toll means you're being tracked. Regardless of law
| we all know that everything eveywhere gets stored
| indefinitely independent of country (if not legally then
| illegally if not by the toll org then by the secret service).
|
| Secondly the country I was in with the toll approach had
| worse infrastructure.
|
| Thirdly, when looking at government spending as a whole, road
| infrastructure (in a non tollroad country) is really not that
| big of an expenditure as far as I know?
|
| Forthly, a country may (and some do) still tax road-users
| only by just taxing car ownership periodically. No need to
| invade privacy for that through toll booths or even worse:
| mandatory tracking devices (countries in Europe are pushing
| for the latter). Added bonus: you can trivially put a tax on
| relatively polluting vehicles if you like and use that to
| subsidize less polluting vehicles.
| lxgr wrote:
| Another option is to just tax fuel, which has the nice side
| effect of being roughly proportionate to actual road usage
| and pollution.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| That would have been better in the past, but doesn't work
| so well with electric vehicles.
|
| Ideally, vehicles should be charged in relation to
| approximately the fourth power of their weight as that is
| proportional to the road damage. However, that will
| drastically change the economics of logistics companies.
| numbasys wrote:
| That's a good point and another reason to encourage it.
| It would boost rail over road, which makes far more
| sense.
| [deleted]
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Nobody who cheers "mobile tickets" has ever watched a guard or
| ticket inspector do their job.
|
| In the UK, a guard with good eyesight and a sprightly, cheerful
| manner can almost run through the carriages shouting "tickets
| please!" and see, with a single glance, all s/he needs.
|
| Then she gets to the muppets with phones. They faff, fumble and
| fuss. They scowl at being interrupted watching videos, browsing
| social media and listening to music. They can't load their app.
| They huff and sigh disrespectfully. The guard can't get focus.
| For a moment they point phones at each other like cowboys in a
| gunfight standoff. She doesn't have a wifi signal, so now there's
| a long and embarrassing delay while passenger and guard stare at
| each others feet.
|
| Finally a joyful _beep_ releases them from technological tension.
| Everyone in the car sighs with relief and she moves on to the
| next grinning smombie.
|
| The whole technology is a festering shitshow foisted on people by
| over-zealous tech peddlers.
|
| Paper tickets rule.
| IanCal wrote:
| Have you ever actually been on a train in the UK? Ticket
| inspectors will go on to do anyone that's ready and come back -
| they're not bemused by someone without their ticket ready. And
| people constantly also fumble for their tickets then present an
| old ticket, then the return instead of the outgoing one, then
| the seat reservation not the ticket etc.
|
| My local station doesn't sell tickets. It has no office. I can
| buy an advance then drive miles to a totally different station
| to print them out _or_ just buy it on my phone even on the way
| to the station and be done with it. I guarantee you buying from
| the ticket inspector is slower than showing them my phone.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't remember it being so bad on my last trip, but a
| number of years back two of us were doing a long distance
| walk in England. I remember train tickets being this exercise
| of "Which of these cards are the right ones to feed into the
| turnstile?" while people were piling up behind us.
|
| In general, transit systems do a pretty terrible job of
| usability testing for people who aren't so used to the system
| that it's second nature and may not even read the language.
| Symbiote wrote:
| That ticket inspector can also turn a blind eye to invalid
| tickets (apply their own discretion/favours/whatever), while
| they'll probably need to follow the official policy with an
| app-based ticket scan.
|
| From the article, it seems unlikely that a data connection is
| required to validate a ticket, except to prevent the same
| ticket being shown twice to different inspectors within a short
| timeframe.
| OJFord wrote:
| They definitely need a data connection for a ticket sale,
| (but they'll go ahead and come back or whatever) I'm not sure
| about validating digital advance sales.
| ilammy wrote:
| What stops the inspector from turning a blind eye to app-
| based tickets?
|
| If you want a true technological dystopia solution then the
| train car should be engineered in a way that nobody gets in
| or out of the car without a valid ticket. Like, make
| entrances a double-door, then you gotta swipe your ticket to
| board, deboard, go between cars while enroute, etc.
| rippercushions wrote:
| I went to an exhibition at a museum today. There's a distance
| of maybe 5 meters between the ticket office and the exhibition
| entrance. Instead of getting a paper ticket and handing it over
| at the gate, I had to tell the clerk my phone number, wait a
| few moments to receive one SMS for each person, click on a link
| in each SMS to retrieve a separate per-person QR code that
| could be scanned at the gate, and then click back and repeat
| individually for everybody in my group. Such efficiency!
| dTal wrote:
| Yes, they efficiently extracted your phone number.
| OJFord wrote:
| Weird, that's not my experience at all.
|
| I have my digital ticket ready when the guard's behind me,
| interrupting my video/HNing far longer than is necessary to do
| so, and everyone else is asking for 'X from <last station they
| can remember> please', cursing that this train actually had
| someone to call 'tickets please', as I feel like a mug for
| actually paying in advance every time.
| SCdF wrote:
| This has not been my experience of digital vs paper tickets in
| any country at any point, the UK included. And I don't mean it
| mostly doesn't happen, I don't think I've ever particularly
| noticed an instance of drama created through tickets being
| digital specifically.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > Paper tickets rule.
|
| Paper tickets suck. It's already a pain having to navigation
| the station to find your platform, and then add onto it trying
| to find a ticket machine. Make sure you get the right ticket
| machine because multiple train companies operate from this
| station!
|
| And then you have to hold on to it for the duration of your
| journey and not lose it, otherwise you'll face the fine.
| lozenge wrote:
| You can buy any ticket from any machine, it's only the first
| screen that's different. If you go to type your destination
| then it allows you to buy any ticket.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| [flagged]
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| Paper tickets are an absolute pain - I hate having to fumble
| around trying to find them, instead of just double clicking the
| power button and bringing up my Wallet.
|
| I've only ever had it checked by the barriers, I can't remember
| the last time I saw a conductor checking tickets on a train.
| stevekemp wrote:
| Some stations don't have barriers, which seems to correlate
| with tickets being checked on those routes more frequently.
|
| (e.g. York, or Edinburgh.)
| nly wrote:
| I feel the same way about people who use mobile phone NFC
| payment at ticket barriers on the tube instead of a plastic
| cards (again via NFC)
|
| Using your phone is much slower and there's a significant
| chance it'll just fail and hold up the person behind you (me).
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Last week I was picked up by a bus that had technically
| already departed, so the operator told me to take a seat
| quickly. I really needed to test out the mobile fare for the
| pilot project, so I waited for the next opportunity to scan
| the QR at a safe, legal stop.
|
| A dude was attempting to board, and I was hardly 10 seconds
| at the scanner when he urged me to get out of his way! It's
| bad enough when a magstripe pass doesn't scan on the first
| try... it's going to be murder if everyone's fumbling with
| their phones and apps and wireless connections.
| brewdad wrote:
| Last April, I did the credit card tap in NYC. Last month I
| was there again and tapped my iPhone and never had an issue.
| It felt just as fast or even faster since my phone is usually
| more accessible than a given card in my wallet.
|
| I wonder if the Tube's tap in tap out setup contributes to
| the issues you see.
| nly wrote:
| It's not the tech per se, it's that you have to open the
| app or at least unlock the phone (whichever it is), and
| people are more cautious with their phones compared to a
| card. They also tend to watch the screen instead of where
| they're going.
|
| I can slap down my card with my arm outstretched, without
| breaking my stride, and before I hit the barrier it opens.
|
| Observe a phone user in a London rush hour and it causes a
| noticeable backlog at gates
| kamilner wrote:
| You neither need an app nor do you need to unlock your
| phone in order to use it for the ticket gates on the
| tube. Perhaps older phones need to be unlocked?
|
| I use my phone exclusively without unlocking it and
| there's no delay.
| djhworld wrote:
| That hasn't been my experience at all, at least in London,
| UK.
|
| There used to be a time where the oyster card was slightly
| faster than the phone in terms of registering at the barrier
| but that's improved a lot over time.
|
| I don't live in London anymore but when I've visited it's
| been so good just tapping your phone through everything.
|
| Additionally the hold ups at the barriers in my experience
| are more down to people's misunderstanding of the cadence
| required between each passenger. This applies to both
| oyster/card and phone, and is more of a UX problem of the
| barrier rather than the technology used to activate it
| tom_ wrote:
| This doesn't match up with my experience. The "tickets please"
| acts as a warning to phone-ticket users that they need to get
| the QR code visible.
|
| Could depend on when you travel I suppose.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Kids these days, how dare they use technology, am I right,
| fellow luddite on the internet?
|
| People lose paper tickets. People throw them on the ground.
| Stations are littered with them. Oh, and people do spend ages
| looking through their pockets, bags, coats and other places for
| where their paper ticket is at.
|
| You're just being contrarian because you're on a tech website,
| tbh.
| LtWorf wrote:
| If a mobile phone is now a prerequisite for living,
| governments should issue them to all citizens, and provide
| maintenance and replacement.
|
| Or just don't expect people who don't own a phone to own a
| ticket.
| arp242 wrote:
| Not just a mobile phone, but a phone with either iOS or
| Android. Plus, a phone with an account with either of two
| parent companies (avoiding that on Android is possible, but
| far from trivial). Any "alternative" system is basically a
| non-starter as all these apps are typically only developed
| for these platforms, and it's become very hard for any new
| player to enter the market.
|
| While the duopoly is better than the monopoly of Microsoft
| Windows back in the day, it's also worse as the reliance on
| software is much greater, _and_ its become harder (if not
| impossible) to write your own implementation for
| $alternative_system.
| lgeek wrote:
| It doesn't need to be a phone running iOS and Android,
| you just need an email client and a PDF viewer for UK
| train etickets
| intelVISA wrote:
| If that's the case they should be issued free (as in tea
| in the harbor) open source devices free from Apple/Google
| spyware for this purpose.
| _dain_ wrote:
| you can use a laptop
| scrollaway wrote:
| What on earth is your logic there? "You have the option
| to send a PDF, thus I deserve a free phone of my
| particular choice"?
| dTal wrote:
| I think the logic is you still need _some_ sort of
| computer to download and display your ticket, whereas
| with a paper ticket you don 't need any external
| equipment. This discriminates against those too
| disadvantaged to own such a thing. You can argue that if
| the government is going to make possession of a device a
| requirement to access government functions, they ought to
| provide it.
| nkellenicki wrote:
| That's not what the OP claimed at all. Paper tickets still
| exist. A mobile phone is not requisite. People can choose
| the option that works for them.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Come here in Sweden.
|
| The main station of the 2nd biggest city has TWO ticket
| machines.
|
| The minor stations have none. You're expected to use the
| phone.
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| People lose phones, or steal them, or hack them. Oh, and
| people do spend ages looking through their pockets, bags,
| coats, and other places for their phones too. But paper
| tickets are less likely to be hacked, and don't run out of
| power.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > littered with them.
|
| I don't see that. The ticket barriers are programmed to
| retain used tickets. And please lay-off the "contrarian"
| slurs, I'm just telling you what I see with my eyes each day.
| If you looked up from your phone you might notice too :)
| JamesMcMinn wrote:
| ScotRail have started to print tickets with QR codes on
| them, which unfortunately are an awkward size (far bigger
| than a credit card, even larger than a PS20), come as a
| single strip without a perforated edge to tear, and are
| generally very low quality. I full expect these to become a
| common sight on the ground as they're not eaten by machines
| and difficult to store even in your wallet.
| [deleted]
| hwatson wrote:
| It's a shame these have become more commonplace.
|
| Northern started issuing them instead of cardboard
| tickets a few years ago and other TOCs followed along
| after Network Rail/Cubic finished adding barcode readers
| to ~all ticket barriers.
|
| I understand why: paper barcode-only tickets are
| significantly cheaper than cardboard tickets (their lack
| of a magstripe allows any generic thermal printer to be
| used), but their larger form factor makes them a definite
| UX downgrade.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Ticket barriers that swallow tickets are not universal. In
| many cities tickets are reusable over a long period of time
| and contactless.
|
| I see downvoters are happy to downvote facts, good going HN
| tonight.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Those aren't the tickets that would be littering the
| ground.
| [deleted]
| nkrisc wrote:
| The e-tickets I use on my local commuter rail are nothing like
| what you described. When I want to use a ticket, I activate
| when I get in the train and then the conductor glances at it
| and sees whatever they need to see. Zero difference from paper
| ticket. They just walk down the carriage looking at paper
| tickets and phones all the same.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I'm on SWT. Where do you have ones that are eyes-on? Our
| guards have to do the scan-beep dance and it slows everything
| to a crawl.
| sschueller wrote:
| This was an issue in Switzerland initially with the
| introduction of the SwissPass (very ugly looking thing, at
| least the new one looks a bit better [1]) which no longer
| showed what it was (the old Abonement cards where translucent
| [2]) but was a card with a photo on it and you would have a
| ticket connected to that card which the conductor could check
| with their smartphones either via NFC or the qr-code on the
| back. The Samsung phones that where issues where slow to scan
| the cards via NFC.
|
| Today you can also have everything on your phone which then
| gets scanned withe QR-Code. BTW, this code changes every few
| seconds so screenshots don't work. You can also instead of
| purchasing a ticket do something that is called "check-in"
| where you check-in before you get on the train and a GPS type
| ticket is issues. At the end of the day the best possible rate
| for you is then calculated and your are billed. Downside is,
| you need to be "tracked" by the train company for this to work.
|
| However the process to inspect tickets is again as fast or
| faster than it was before. In fact when someone has paper
| tickets (specifically papers from non-Swiss ticket offices
| (France, Italy etc.)) it can take longer.
|
| There is also a rule if you can't present your ticket in a
| timely manner it's considered invalid. This never happens but
| when the conductor yells tickets please, get your phone out.
|
| [1] https://www.swisspass.ch/new-swisspass?lang=en
|
| [2] https://hymnos.existenz.ch/wp-
| content/uploads/2010/08/DSC037...
| josephcsible wrote:
| > ("But wait," I hear you cry, "isn't getting a persistent device
| ID exactly what Apple don't want you to do?" And you'd be right!
| Technically, I believe the device UUID actually does change
| between installs, but they store a copy in the device keychain,
| which doesn't get wiped when you remove the app. This is stupid,
| and almost certainly a contravention of App Store policy.)
|
| More proof that Apple's walled garden is a scam: it fails to
| protect against the thing that its alleged purpose of existence
| is to protect against.
| grahar64 wrote:
| Such a good read.
| jrockway wrote:
| They seem to have removed the device "abc" from being allowed to
| download keys, or that was an "obviously fake" device id for the
| article: > $ curl -s 'https://device.theticketke
| eper.com/download_keys?device_name=abc' | jq > { >
| "return_code": "error", > "message": "Device not
| registered." > }
| switch007 wrote:
| > Nowadays, the industry would very much like you to ditch your
| paper ticket in favour of a fancy mobile barcode one (or an ITSO
| smartcard2); not only do they not have to spend money on printing
| tickets but they also gain the ability to more precisely track
| the ticket's usage across the network and minimise fraud.
|
| And unsurprisingly only a subset of tickets are available on the
| apps. Therefore the government gets its "fare simplification"
| it's so badly wanted, through the back door, in a sense, the
| harder it pushes mobile tickets
|
| Eg rover tickets are not on the ticketing apps. These can be
| excellent value.
|
| Edit: also the government very recently announced [0] they are to
| scrap return fares. This will without a shadow of doubt increase
| prices for a great many journeys.
|
| [0] https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/end-of-the-line-for-
| ret...
| riskpreneurship wrote:
| I dunno about the UK, but I think RFID readers might just be
| cheaper because they require so little maintenance.
|
| I bought a single-use one-way subway ticket recently. When I
| got to the turnstiles, none of them had slots to swipe or
| insert the ticket.
|
| Of course, it's 2023. You can tap the paper ticket as if you
| had a refillable or monthly pass, it has the RFID circuitry
| sandwiched between paper layers. No more mechanical moving
| parts which can break and slow down the rush hour commute.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I don't know if they do this in the UK, but using apps also
| gives the government the ability to profit from breakage the
| same way gift card programs do. The last time I had a public
| transport app I had to maintain a balance that could expire.
| The place that implemented this system also prohibited all
| other forms of payment as a Covid measure, and for some reason
| hasn't reverted that policy yet.
| Symbiote wrote:
| In London you can use a normal contactless debit or credit
| card or NFC payment on a phone for public transport. This is
| great for Londoners, and even better for visitors who don't
| need to figure out what they need to buy or how to top up a
| card.
|
| I don't belive the ticket apps being discussed keep a
| balance, but I haven't used them myself.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I've seen that system in quite a few cities now. I'm was
| initially surprised to see it adopted, because breakage
| revenue can be enormous. But it's common enough now that I
| find places using exclusively the old stored value cards to
| be outright contemptible.
| metadat wrote:
| Think about it from their shoes. Why would you actively
| spend resources to replace an existing "working" system
| to develop and implement a new and more efficient system
| which nets you less resources?
| antipotoad wrote:
| One reason could be to enable novel fare systems, like
| London has with its Oyster network.
|
| You can travel around (scanning your contactless debit /
| credit card) without thinking about how much you're
| paying, safe in the knowledge that the system caps your
| daily / weekly spend to predefined limits, essentially
| making it never more expensive than a daily / weekly
| travel card would be. The caps are automatically
| calculated for the zones you travel in.
|
| It's a very nice experience as a rider. Especially
| beneficial to visitors who can just scan through the
| gates as any Londoner would, no ticket purchase required.
|
| As for the rationale to implement such a system -- well,
| it's ultimately a public service. All revenue generated
| is reinvested into the network, in London at least. The
| economic value of a fast, efficient, painless transit
| system that everyone uses, regardless of class or wealth,
| most surely outweighs any lost breakage revenue.
| brewdad wrote:
| NYC really needs to get the tap to pay working for AirTrain
| at JFK. I'm not even mad about the ridiculous $8 fare
| (though that's another issue) it's the having to stand in
| line to purchase a paper card that I won't use again until
| I return to the airport to go home.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Contactless debit cards from a bunch of countries aren't
| accepted on london underground. That makes it less good for
| visitors. They don't even publish a list - just some will
| refuse to work, and you have no way to know as a visitor
| till you try it.
|
| For even more confusion, some contactless debit cards won't
| work the first time, but if you try them 5 mins later
| (presumably after the main office has done a test charge on
| the card), it then works fine.
| brw wrote:
| I believe that since February 1st (so 4 days ago) you can
| also use contactless debit and credit cards for train
| travel throughout the entirety of the Netherlands. I think
| that most if not all regional public transport providers,
| for say bus/tram/metro, already support it as well.
|
| Can't use it when you have a subscription though, so a lot
| of people here will still be using their plastic public
| transport cards for personal and work travels, including
| me, but it's nice to have the possibility at least.
|
| https://ovpay.nl/en
| andrewshadura wrote:
| Still OV-chipkaart is useful as it allows you to take OV-
| fiets.
| lozenge wrote:
| Well, currently the single fare is often PS0.20 less than the
| return fare, for historical reasons. Scrapping them seems like
| a good solution.
|
| As already shown in this thread, even the employees don't
| understand the very complicated fare rules. My manager was very
| proud of winning a half hour long argument with a ticket
| inspector about the Conditions of Carriage, but most of us just
| want to buy a ticket and go.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| With mobile tickets I've also lost the ability to break my
| journey up (i.e. visit somewhere half way along a route without
| having to buy two tickets) which has increased the price of my
| journeys.
| plugin-baby wrote:
| How have mobile tickets stopped this? Wasn't it always
| against the rules, even if possible when the middle station
| lacked barriers?
| switch007 wrote:
| > Wasn't it always against the rules
|
| No. Many return fares explicitly allow a break of journey -
| especially non-advance fares.
|
| It is the introduction of single-only fares which will have
| a greater impact than mobile fares.
| mnd999 wrote:
| No, this was always part of the rules - unless you have an
| Advance ticket. And as far as I know that is still the
| case.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| I tried to use an off peak QR code ticket and it did not
| pass the gates and I was told I wasn't allowed to do it,
| the ticket rules did not mention it either.
|
| It is possible the staff just didn't know about the break
| in journey rule, I was too tired to fight it at the time.
| switch007 wrote:
| Our ticketing system is so incredibly complex, and train
| companies aren't always interested in educating their
| staff, so unfortunately very frequently the staff get it
| wrong
| mnd999 wrote:
| Yeah, it's still in the conditions of carriage (https://w
| ww.nationalrail.co.uk/National%20Rail%20Conditions%...) -
| Section 16. I don't think gate line staff are well
| trained on stuff like this though.
| plugin-baby wrote:
| > You may also end your journey (in either direction in
| the case of a return Ticket) before the destination shown
| on the Ticket.
|
| TIL, thanks!
|
| On a related note, I found out the hard way that (some?)
| airlines don't let you use a return flight if you missed
| the outbound leg.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes, airlines will typically cancel the whole trip if you
| just don't show up for the outbound leg.
|
| I have, on rare occasions, not shown up for the return
| flight because just buying a new one-way ticket for a new
| date/time was cheaper than rescheduling the existing
| return leg. I don't think you're actually supposed to do
| that either.
| lbriner wrote:
| Yeah, I missed my outbound Air Canada flight at LHR after
| my coach broke down and when I asked about getting a
| ticket for a later flight, the rep told me that they
| "weren't supposed to" sell returns if you weren't
| planning to use both legs even though they were cheaper
| than a single but she sold me one anyway, just told me to
| make-up a return leg and then just don't turn up!
|
| Pretty bad really, I guess an example of where the theory
| of balancing the numbers doesn't match up with the
| reality that is obscene that they can gouge you for less
| service, I think it should ultimately be "admin overhead"
| + "flight(s)". Most people accept that a single can't
| always be half of a return but it should always be
| noticeably cheaper.
| ghaff wrote:
| In my experience, travel between Europe and the US is
| particularly random. Sometimes, open jaw flights are
| perfectly fine in terms of pricing. Other times, I've had
| to jump through hoops of one sort or another to do a
| round-trip from a single city because one-way flights
| were so expensive relative to the round trip.
| zhte415 wrote:
| Just do away with tickets and apps altogether and scan your
| national ID card.
|
| Or give everyone a national fare allowance to boot, like the
| national subsidy for maintenance of roads and their other
| associated costs.
| IanCal wrote:
| There isn't a national id card.
| syradar wrote:
| There is in lots of countries...
| jjgreen wrote:
| Not in the UK, which is the subject of discussion
| japanman425 wrote:
| Okay very good but why bother?
| emj wrote:
| I highly recommend Harley Watsons talk (_unlobito) about ITSO and
| footnotes on Oyster card. https://lobi.to/talks/papertickets/
| that talk is also referenced in this article, a truly wonderful
| presenter.
| qrt wrote:
| if you reverse the domain of this website, you get "state" :)
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| During the COVID outbreak, my public transit provider began to
| neglect their fareboxes (partly because everyone was boarding in
| the rear and didn't bother to pay fares anyway.)
|
| I noticed that the boxes were still broken and unmaintained. I
| put 2 and 2 together and realized that a mobile "upgrade" was
| coming soon, so I kept my eyes out. And sure enough, I got myself
| invited to participate in the pilot project with the upgraded
| app.
|
| The deadlines slipped twice but the pilot began in mid-January.
| So far I have not had glitches with scanning or boarding. But let
| me tell you.
|
| There are disclaimers in the FAQ. Since the mobile passes are QR-
| based and not NFC, they absolutely require WAN connectivity on
| both sides in order to activate a pass. My initial testing
| indicated that a loss of connectivity will not invalidate an
| active pass, because it's endowed with a built-in expiration
| countdown. But we shall see.
|
| The FAQ also says straight out, of course, that the customer must
| keep the phone charged in order to use the pass. Of course it
| goes without saying that your phone must be functional in order
| to scan the thing. So that's a whole tech stack that could go
| awry and strand you if you don't take precautions.
|
| Hey, this may reduce fraud and friction at the farebox. I don't
| know. Many people will love not having another thing to lose or
| the convenience of purchasing passes without going somewhere
| (they cost way more on board a bus.) But the Luddite in me
| doesn't want this. I'd much rather carry around an old reliable
| paper-based pass, and I will go back to that for as long as I can
| get away with it.
|
| But I won't turn down a $75 gift card to play along with the
| pilot test.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Of course it goes without saying that your phone must be
| functional in order to scan the thing. So that's a whole tech
| stack that could go awry and strand you if you don't take
| precautions
|
| It could go awry if Google fucked up, Samsung/phone
| manufacturer fucks up, battery or charger fucks up, software
| developer fucks up, internet, etc, etc.
|
| we are replacing reliable sustems with fragile ones everywhere
| osclarto wrote:
| I live in Berlin and use the official BVG app for using the
| public transport here. it bugs out temporarily fairly
| regularly and I have to make the decision whether to buy a
| paper ticket to cover me (incurring extra expense) while the
| app isn't working or to risk it and hope the ticket inspector
| doesn't stop me/shows me leniency when I demonstrate the non-
| functioning app. extremely annoying
| shortcake27 wrote:
| A tangential story from Melbourne - you're required to
| replace your Myki every ~7 years because of its shitty
| implementation, and when you do, it disables auto topup.
| However, when you get a new card, you also can't immediately
| enable auto topup - you have to wait some time until the card
| is transferred. So a friend of mine had this happen and
| wasn't able to touch onto the tram the following morning
| because they had no balance. Trams don't have Myki machines,
| and there was no machine at their stop. Topping up online can
| take up to 24h. Paper tickets were removed to push Myki. So
| there was no way for them to pay the fare, but they had to
| get to work. Of course, ticket inspectors rocked up and fined
| them. It is genuinely incredible that commuters are expected
| to either pay a fine or be late to work because of
| shortcomings in the Myki system.
| vaidhy wrote:
| You cannot take a cab or something else? This seems similar
| to the digital piracy issue. It is inconvenient, so I
| decided to do something illegal.
|
| Otoh, I have seen Seattle bus drivers wave off the fare in
| some cases.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I've never been to Melbourne, but when tube is down in
| London, the whole city grinds to a halt, you can't get
| home for hours and people die because ambulance can't get
| through
| LtWorf wrote:
| In sweden Coop supermarkets were closed for a weekend because
| they rely on some cloud thingy from USA that had gotten a
| ransomware.
|
| It was their billing system, you couldn't pay cash, they had
| no way to record it.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| You are halfway there.
|
| https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/coop-
| supermar...
|
| This issue was that Visma (the MSP COOP uses for the Teller
| systems) had their Kaseya VSA server open to the internet
| and thus got affected by this.
|
| An RMM itself is fine, needed to manage systems.
|
| Do you know how many Swedish companies is on Office 365 +
| some RMM? A lot. lmao
|
| We also have our own shit break all the time like Swish
| made by our banks.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| My iPhone supports transit passes even when the battery is
| dead. I don't think this is an intractable problem and indeed
| the designers of NFC designed for this problem: the NFC
| payment system provides the juice required for the SE chip to
| do it's thing.
|
| QR code as transit passes aren't great but eventually the
| worse designs will fade out. NFC is a way superior piece of
| tech and way faster too - just tap your phone and go. I was
| pleasantly surprised that transfers worked seamlessly this
| way too.
| exikyut wrote:
| Wow. Where are the API docs for this??
| vageli wrote:
| It is a feature in iOS called Express Cards:
| https://support.apple.com/guide/security/express-cards-
| with-...
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > Since the mobile passes are QR-based and not NFC, they
| absolutely require WAN connectivity on both sides in order to
| activate a pass.
|
| Why they rolling out QR-based public transit ticketing in 2023
| when NFC (which all phone platforms support even with a flat
| battery) solutions are table-stakes now?
| [deleted]
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| There is actually already a system of near-field passes that
| has been in place for several years and was supported by the
| old fare machines and bus boxes. The new QR scanners also
| appear to have an NFC scan icon on them. So I believe they're
| future-proof.
| folmar wrote:
| Maybe all phone OSes (I'm too lazy to check) but far from all
| phones. For example a popular budget model Realme C25Y does
| not have NFC, or in general terms anything that is primary
| designed for the Chinese market, where payments are made
| through WeChat with QR codes, usually misses it.
| Operyl wrote:
| Lowest bidder, government procurement is fun.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| Why not go all the way and tie your ID, medical info, and
| online presence to the phone, that way they can cancel your
| toll pass and life when you inevitably do, say or think
| something the ruling party doesn't like.
| nischalsamji wrote:
| This sounds like valley metro
| wodenokoto wrote:
| The best tech solution I've yet to see is simply accepting
| credit/debit cards.
|
| Checking in, they can charge you minimum fare and checking out
| they can charge you remainder.
|
| They could also charge you maximum fare and return remainder on
| checkout.
|
| You can even keep track of card and give discounts for multiple
| rides.
|
| All without registration. Works with watches and phones too.
| domh wrote:
| This is how the London Underground works now. Used to require
| an Oyster card but has worked with contactless cards for a
| good few years at this point.
| kevinh456 wrote:
| Coming from the states, tap in/tap out with my watch on the
| underground was so easy.
| harvey9 wrote:
| Yes. And they still honour the daily fare cap with this
| payment method, and you can register your card and access
| an online fare statement.
| tialaramex wrote:
| And the weekly cap. Unless you are staying for a while
| (e.g. working here for a month, overseas leg of a degree
| with-a-year-abroad) you can just tap into all of London's
| transport with your payment card and it's simpler without
| costing extra.
| JimDabell wrote:
| Same with the buses in London, and all public transport in
| Singapore.
| beAbU wrote:
| We have this in South Africa, on the service between Pretoria
| and Johannesburg called the Gautrain.
|
| It works with tap cards, both debit and credit. Can even be
| used to get in and out of the parking by tapping at the boom
| gate at entrance/exit.
|
| You can buy a special Gautrain card that uses the same
| hardware. But the only benefit of the dedicated card is for
| folks that travel frequently, as you can buy discounted
| prepaid fare, something like 40 trips to be used in 20 days,
| for half price.
|
| Only real risk is if you carry both a credit and debit card,
| and mix them up during the scan in/out process. They then
| charge maximum fare on both cards.
| ErikCorry wrote:
| Good luck finding out ahead of time whether your foreign card
| is going to be accepted by the system.
|
| Also seems difficult for children who don't generally have
| credit cards.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| You can still purchase a paper NFC ticket.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Good luck finding out ahead of time whether your foreign
| card is going to be accepted by the system.
|
| On the tills themselves there's all the signs of all the
| accepted cards and it was a fairly exhaustive list. It's
| also probably available online, so it should be pretty easy
| to check ahead of time.
| countrymile wrote:
| Children travel for free on transport for london
| m01 wrote:
| >=11 year olds need to for example pay for the tube:
| https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/free-and-discounted-travel.
| tazjin wrote:
| Moscow metro does this. In very busy stations only the
| turnstiles at the sides have this functionality though, as
| the native NFC cards ("Troika") are much faster (contactless
| payments can take O(seconds), which is a lot when there's 50k
| people trying to get through).
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| pretty sure they do this in Vancouver bc now. i think i heard
| san Francisco is starting it too now. but i haven't tried
| either first hand
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Our system uesd to accept credit/debit. Unfortunately on a
| bus circa 1999, you don't have an always-available connection
| to the payment processing center, so you settle all the
| transactions back at the barn.
|
| One of my so-called friends just carried around an expired
| credit card, and rode the bus with impunity. The fare box
| accepted anything that seemed legit. So it's reasonable to
| see why that sort of payment method was discontinued with
| prejudice.
|
| (Of course there's no reason not to bring it back with
| connectivity improvements, but they'd rather push mobile
| fares at the expense of something actually convenient to
| people in the economic bracket of "transit rider".)
| kotaKat wrote:
| That was also an old exploit on the GTE Airfone systems on
| aircraft of the same vintage. It didn't do credit
| verification in air, and accepted any expired calling or
| credit card and gave you phree phone calls at 35,000 feet.
| Only when the plane landed and the data downloaded did GTE
| find out they got stiffed. ;)
| ErikCorry wrote:
| Seems like this could be fixed with a blacklist that was
| downloaded to the terminals periodically.
| nly wrote:
| Yeah but we have chip and pin and NFC now, so it's an
| active protocol between card and reader
| Symbiote wrote:
| The London system makes a single charge at the end of each
| day, to reduce possible fees incurred by foreign cards etc.
|
| I think they set up a special protocol with Visa and
| Mastercard to allow this.
| tobylane wrote:
| > I think they set up a special protocol with Visa and
| Mastercard to allow this.
|
| Yes, called Contactless Transit Framework.
| https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/policy-and-guidance/reports-
| pub...
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| A tap card is a nice middle ground. No idea why people are
| dying to drag so much complexity into a simple transaction.
| totetsu wrote:
| Am I miss remembering or can the nfc mobile train passes in
| Japan be used even with a dead battery?
| larouxn wrote:
| Yes, I believe this is correct as the terminal you tap/place
| your card/phone near transits enough power wirelessly to read
| the NFC (F) data or so I have read. The NFC (Felica) +
| Osaifu-Keitai + Suica/Passmo system is quite interesting and
| super reliable.
|
| Source: on a train in Tokyo right now
| netsharc wrote:
| Sounds like an iPhone feature:
| https://www.techradar.com/news/apples-iphone-xs-has-a-
| game-c...
|
| The Pasmo/Suica cards are intriguing, they are NFC, but also
| store the last few transactions on the card itself, there are
| also mobile apps for scanning these cards to see how much
| credit you have left and list the above-mentioned
| transactions.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It was a feature all along since flip phones
| implementation, which was replicated and one-upped on
| iPhone. Phone implementations run from leftover charges on
| empty battery, not by power from the reader(which requires
| a coil).
| shortcake27 wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of the Pasmo/Suica cards. They're easy to
| obtain and easy to accept payments, so uptake is huge (if
| memory serves me correctly, literally accepted
| everywhere?). You get most of the benefits of card payments
| (fast, no fiddling with change, no "do you have a smaller
| note"), but you also maintain anonymity which is a common
| argument I hear against cards in Germany and why card
| payments are so rare there (at least in 2017, I don't know
| if the situation has changed).
| totetsu wrote:
| They're not quit accepted everywhere. Mostly in high
| convenience, small purchase places. You can get multiples
| of them for maximum privacy, but they're 500yen each to
| purchase.
| leipert wrote:
| In Germany the pandemic had quite an impact. From 2019 to
| 2021 cash payments dropped by ~12%, down to 38% of
| transactions.
|
| What's more important, loads of shops eg bakeries have
| card terminals now.
|
| Source: https://www.papershift.com/blog/die-
| kartenzahlung-ist-in-deu...
| netsharc wrote:
| Although the chances of formite transmission (i.e.
| through touch) is apparently quite low:
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-
| and-r...
|
| Disclaimer: Everyone seems to have their own level of
| risk tolerance/acceptance with Covid.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Something like that (for general payments, not for public
| transport) used to exist in Germany ("Geldkarte"), but it
| never became a big success and is now being discontinued.
| And personally speaking - not being able to easily look
| up how much money is stored on that card is somewhat
| annoying, so I'd rather continue carrying cash in that
| case.
| kalleboo wrote:
| My Japanese feature phone back in 2009 could also use
| Mobile Suica with a dead battery. I believe at the time the
| NFC wasn't active like on the iPhone but a passive "card"
| that was reprogrammed by the phone and didn't need power.
|
| The iPhone only got this "power reserve" recently.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Last Covid, I did the same reverse engineering our government's
| Covid app and found out that the API keys (public and private)
| were hardcoded in the source code. Never got any response.
|
| Edit: Emphasized public and private keys
| tiziano88 wrote:
| Where else should API keys be, if they are needed by the app?
| ggm wrote:
| Private key should be in the trust region and set up when you
| make the account
| harvey9 wrote:
| I took the gpp to mean the publisher had leaked their
| private key by putting it in the app code when it should
| never have left their servers.
| ggm wrote:
| Also possible. Enough private keys in git repo to make
| this believable.
| nly wrote:
| The fact that there's a gender field on the ticket is
| interesting.
| lol768 wrote:
| It's unused in reality.
| tescocles wrote:
| One might assume it's forward thinking - if this were used in
| Japan, where there are woman-only carriages, this might be
| relevant.
| nly wrote:
| There should never be a need for this and the fact that they
| exist is sad.
| implements wrote:
| Sometimes people give one-day unlimited travel tickets they no
| longer need to other passengers as they leave the station,
| which is at least against the terms of issue if not actually
| illegal.
|
| I guess having a sex / gender field makes that kind of re-use
| slightly harder?
| switch007 wrote:
| Which part of the National Rail Conditions of Travel is that
| against?
|
| Edit: section 5.1.2
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