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- Hacker News
- This is a problem far beyond bus fairs.
HTLM5 and CSS3 completely remove the need to use a custom app.
All online services should just use a web site, accessible by any browsing device...
by johnea - Same is happening in Germany as well, including the supermarket apps mentioned at the end of the article.
Even better, in NRW region some ticket models are only available on the app, nowhere to be found on the ticket machines or at the counter on the stations.
by pjmlp - I find it weird that you have to pay every time you get on a bus in the UK it seems?
Are there no passes? e.g. in Budapest I have a monthly public transport pass and I just board the vehicle when it arrives without having to validate or purchase a ticket every time.
by Elfener - IMO there's unspoken context: the over 60s are given a free, physical pass that does not require a smartphone to apply for or use. There is no cost to apply nor renew. It is not means-tested. There is obviously a large cost to that - nearly £1bn across the whole of England.
It's a political choice whom to inflict operational burden or cost upon.
by gib444 - In Germany we used to have the Geldkarte (money card), which was similar to a credit card, but anonymous, it didn't require Internet, you could charge it with money at an ATM and use it for payments. You could also put bus tickets on it.
Maybe 10 years ago the whole project was stopped, sadly, and now we have the plague that requires everyone including handicapped people and seniors to use (often old and insecure) smartphones.
by hobo123 - Because the transit authority has to work at taking your fare. Vs. the easy route of trusting a cheap & convenient app ecosystem (helpfully run by SpyCo, CreepTech, and DataHarvest Ltd.) do all the hard bits. While the authority basks in feeling cool and trendy. Plus, smartphone fare fraud looks really complicated (vs. counterfeit metal tokens or whatever) - so the authority feels no pressure to do anything about it.
Less cynically, a good national policy might be to treat all "excess" revenues collected by organizations providing better deals to those passing various wealth/class/fluency tests ("has bank account", "has smart phone", etc.) as "poor taxes". Which are totally legal...but must be accounted for in excruciating detail, and every last farthing turned over to the greedy nitpickers staffing the Poor Tax Dept. of His Majesty's Revenue Authority. Every month, no excuses. So, to avoid that monthly misery for their so-privileged selves, the managers at every org with the paper power to collect poor taxes work hard to make sure that they are not doing so.
by bell-cot - The actual answer is there's operational cost to handling cash, or payment methods beyond the ones that cover 99.9% people well. You pay more for the extra hassle the whole system has to serve that .1%
You may not like or disagree with it. But it's the true answer.
by unified101 - In Germany I have a monthly plan. I got a physical card with an NFC chip inside it. No app shenanigans. I can pause and renew my plan from home: log into the Bahn website, go to my account settings and adjust things there.
The real issue is not smartphones, iOS and Android or apps. The issue is that independent technical standards are intentionally ignored. There is no reason that I should not be able to set my plan through curl and hand-draw the QR code with pen and paper. Sure, I would not want to actually do it like that, that's not the point. The point is: if I can use curl and pen & paper, then I can use whatever else I want. If I want to use a smartphone I should be able to code my own app according to a well-documented public API. Those APIs already do exist, otherwise the official app would not work, so it's no extra work for the service provider.
We need a law that mandates open specifications for access to all publicly available services.
by HiPhish