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.
The problem is that there seems to be a serious amount of fraud there. I suspect the susceptibility to fraud is at least partially self-inflicted here, but the Deutschlandticket is well known to have been abused in various ways.
So the providers want a live verification, not a static QR code that always remains valid for a month or so. My understanding that this is both, to combat fraud where fake tickets are sold (well, real ones but bought with fake or stolen payment methods) as well as people using tickets other than their own. The latter is theoretically prevented by checking photo ID, but almost nobody does that in practice.
So they force the app because it's slightly harder to fake than just copying the QR code. I don't think you'll get a more open system here unless the underlying vulnerabilities are fixed in some way. And you'd probably need to embed photo ID information in the ticket somehow to prevent multiple people from using a ticket, and I doubt that will happen for privacy reasons.
My NFC public transport ticket cards that I've been using over the last 20 years across two cities I lived in all had my photo printed on them, so I don't think it's a big deal to encode it in the ticket. These days you could even just link it to/sign it with electronic IDs instead.
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.
And for some transactions that makes sense. But for something that is supposed to serve everyone, and where there is a (natural) monopoly, that cannot be and acceptable answer.
Also, having your entire economy depend on companies that are not under your control, and that are even actively being weaponised, that seems like a stupid thing to do.
Also, nothing in all of that precluded a web app.
It'll take a couple of years but people will figure it out eventually.
Others already answered why you're wrong so I won't repeat it; just wanted to point out how your comment reads like a silly "you may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like" meme.
There are operational issues with phones (e.g. batteries running out).
This has nothing to do with handling cash. It is to do with the elimination of paper tickets for monthly passes. Where I live you can pay cash for one off tickets, but they refuse to sell you paper monthly tickets.
Its even greater where I live for some people. My daughter was able to get a young person's tickets last year for unlimited bus travel within the county (not sure whether it was all bus companies, or just the biggest) for £80/month whereas individual fares were more quite a lot than that each just into town and back on weekdays.
I don't think Kelly is asking for the price advantages of paying monthly.... I think they're asking why are bus companies so hot and bothered about not selling paper monthly tickets when they don't apparently object to selling paper daily tickets?
Over here in Europa you get bombarded with the monthly/yearly subscription. And for companies it makes much more sense, regarding cashflow/projection etc.
A single ticket has to be printed and used in the space of a few hours. A monthly pass can be printed at any time and sold until the beginning of the month, for a much higher price. Much more risky for the transportation company.
Say you have a fancy printer and can print fake monthly passes. You can print a hundred fakes today "dated" November 23, valid for December 2026, and sell them until the end of November to people who can use them in December.
Ie. the end of the month November, not the end of December. I suppose you could also sell the remainder at a discount in December.
> The actual answer is there's operational cost to handling cash, or payment methods beyond the ones that cover 99.9% people well.
Overhead handling cash is understandable, but otherwise the point makes no sense.
If you use an app, you probably have an account in some database someplace that holds your contact, billing, and balance information. That account has to be available online for the app on people's smartphones via API calls.
You also need a web portal: if someone loses/breaks their smartphone, and they need to re-install their app, they need to be able to login without the app to perhaps get their credentials again to attach to their app.
That backend has to be able to handle automated monthly payments, as well as manual top-ups via debit, and even cash for those not comfortable with giving payment information:
Are you implying that there isn't an operational cost for maintaining the infrastructure to support cashless payments or that it's cheaper? Unless I see actual numbers I am not convinced and that 1% you mention sounds completely random to me and not really "the true answer".
If paying cash is more expensive for a company then so be it. One should not be forced to pay extra simply because one uses the official method of exchange provided by the State.
If legal tender is offered as a method of exchange then it should automatically be the best (least expensive).
Frankly, what's happened here is outrageous. By not legislating and outlawing this practice we've another instance of government ineptitude.
Agreed, and I would like to see practices such as these challenged in court. On grounds of consumer law: unreasonably burdensome terms are not allowed, on grounds of not discriminating against people who do not wish to use a smartphone. If the judiciary does not see any law applicable; representatives should enact it. We must not be penalized for wanting Big Tech OS out of our personal transactions using .... legal tender!!! Disgraceful state of affairs.
How does that compare to the operational cost of developing an app, maintaining an app, paying for the infrastructure behind it, and having the payment processors take their cut, operate customer support etc?
You dont have to handle cash directly, you can have kiosks that are dedicated to adding cash to a public transit card and they will solve the problem you are talking about.
First: You can have kiosks (in central locations like metro stations) or you can have dedicated points like where a market collects the cash and they add the balance that way.
Second: The public transit company. we aren't splitting the atom here.
In London you can top up your Oyster card in many small shops. Maybe someone here can confirm what the financial arrangement is - my assumption is the shop doesn't charge the operator as they get the benefit of more customers spending on other items.
I wish we could live in a world where everything wasn't optimized to make the most amount of money with the absolute bare minimum of costs. What a world we could live in if convenience, quality and enjoyability of a product were taken into account instead of how a business can save $1 to buy the CEO another private jet.
Public busses aren't a luxury, so this doesn't matter.
Making all the allowances for wheelchairs and the blind costs way more, yet you don't charge them more.
That is even if it were true enough to matter, which it's probably not, and there were no other ways to address it, which there absolutely are.
It's not the real reason but it probably is given as part of the excuse, while the real reason is either simple thoughtlessness, lack of consideration, developers doing whatever is easiest, and/or all the same reasons that cash is being gradually more and more disfavored across the board in all things. You can track and control people sooooo much better without anonymous offline cash.
Probably both. Some people involved are doing it for the first reason, and others are allowing it for the second reason. It's just super convenient synergy for everyone except the consumers.
> The actual answer is there's operational cost to handling cash...
Really? From TFA:
When comparing the prices of First’s weekly bus pass in my area, which is available to purchase on the bus, and its monthly pass, which is exclusive to its app...
If the reason were "operational cost to handling cash", you'd expect that cost to be substantially less for the one where you handle cash only once per month than the one where you have to handle it four times per month, no?
I don't know Britain, but in my part of America the extra costs of taking credit cards are so high that most gasoline (petrol) stations give a ~3% discount to customers paying with old-fashioned paper cash. And I know little grocery stores with signs by their register, asking customers to please pay with cash - because margins are tight, and the bank takes an X% cut of every credit card payment and a Y% cut of every debit card payment.
Well from what I've heard folks in US frequently revert credit card transactions, something almost impossible to do with same companies in Europe for example (tried it once, got automated feedback email in 2 weeks and nothing happened).
Just life frequent insurance accidents, this raises overall costs. May be some other forces too of course
It is possible in Europe with credit cards and with SEPA Direct Debit (commonly used for recurring debits such as subscriptions), but indeed regular bank transactions are difficult to reverse. To me this is the big benefit of credit cards and Paypal: it gives the consumer real leverage when disputing a transaction, and it shifts some of the burden to resolve the issue to the vendor.
I don't' know what "that" you're referring to, but in the USA it is against the payment processor agreement to give a discount for cash. So not illegal, but a contract breach.
> ...but in the USA it is against the payment processor agreement to give a discount for cash. So not illegal, but a contract breach.
This may be true, but State and Federal law prevail. In California, this [0] looks to be the relevant regulation:
1748.1. (a) No retailer in any sales, service, or lease transaction with a consumer may impose a surcharge on a cardholder who elects to use a credit card in lieu of payment by cash, check, or similar means. A retailer may, however, offer discounts for the purpose of inducing payment by cash, check, or other means not involving the use of a credit card, provided that the discount is offered to all prospective buyers.
Most mom-and-pop places I shop at here in San Francisco either offer discounts for paying in cash or have signs up suggesting that folks pay in cash so the business keeps more of the transaction.
The gas stations doing it have large, permanent roadside signage displaying the different prices for "Cash" vs. "Credit". So there may be exceptions in the fine print of those payment processor agreements. Or the gas stations all know the laws giving them such rights, which the agreements can't override. Or something.
£264.00 per year, per head extra, is operational theft, and it will be MUCH higher than 1% of rides, and further more , cash rides will exist in perpetuity as there is NO OTHER WAY to deal with edge cases and contingencies of public transport, making the 'extra' cost look more like some wienie frustrated managers little play at despotism.
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.
Recently took a bus from an airport in Nordrhein-Westfalen.
Had to install an app, create an account with the bus agency, give way too many of my personal details including address and phone number. Needed a smartphone, internet connection, German-compatible digital payment method (2 out 3 payment methods did not work).
This was a surreal experience. It literally took me about half an hour of struggling my way through a half-baked Germlish app to buy a single ticket, for a trip that I will probably make only once in my life. When the bus came, a very long line formed because, of course, most people assume you could just buy a ticket with the driver. I felt quite bad for this driver who probably had to deal with this every day. This particular bus only went once every two hours. It made me wonder whether any tourists had arrived there, waited 1½ hours for the bus, only to be rejected because they did not have a ticket and could not bribe the driver with physical euros. The airport apparently had no exchange offices.
Compare: when I took the bus in Montenegro, I gave the bus driver a 2 euro coin and stepped inside the bus and it went.
In most countries we had functional paper ticketing systems which were cheap, easy to understand and provided privacy. But they had to be replaced because . . . apps are cool???
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.
These store discount coupon apps are a plague, and then often things don't even work (like login etc). The other day the radio aired an Aldi ad advertising some on sale items "cheap without an app". That's the way to go.
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.
I have the same issue but regarding paying for groceries. I have to pay more because I don't have access to the grocery store's coupon app because I don't use a smartphone.
That's exactly what loyalty programs are. You sell your data for a discount on purchases. It's not even a secret, that's the actual goal of loyalty programs.
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.
> Because the transit authority has to work at taking your fare.
Then why did they remove the option that has them "work[ing] at taking your fare" once per month and leave in the one that has them doing that four times per month?
Hell, one can pay cash on the bus itself for a ticket to ride the bus. If cash-handling were the motivation, that'd be the first to go... the author of TFA mentions "First's weekly bus pass" and that they're in Scotland. This leads me to a company called "FirstGroup", which operates "First Bus" and "First Train". First Bus has this to say [0][1] about acquiring tickets on a bus:
With a wide range available, including weekly and monthly tickets, there’s no need to have the right change as you can make your purchase in advance. ... Contactless payments, Apple pay, Google pay and cash are accepted on our buses.
Again, if it's actually about the work of taking the fare, you'd expect the fares that are the most work to gather to be the ones to move to "Payment via Google Android or Apple iOS only" fares.
[1] You might note that First Bus says it operates in England and Ireland but makes no mention of Scotland. IDK why that is, but this Scottish tourism website [2] links straight to First Bus's website to answer the question "Where can I find accessible bus and coach travel in Scotland?", so I believe the omission of a mention of Scotland to be an oversight.
I wonder how the costs of "working at taking your fare" measure up to just eliminate that work, and accept that people ride public transport for free and is paid from public funds, as they have decided in Luxembourg (where there is ample tax revenue) and Belgrade (where people have historically refused to pay, then the city made it official policy).
Do not discount the many benefits, which might be difficult to quantify!
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.
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.
The problem is that there seems to be a serious amount of fraud there. I suspect the susceptibility to fraud is at least partially self-inflicted here, but the Deutschlandticket is well known to have been abused in various ways.
So the providers want a live verification, not a static QR code that always remains valid for a month or so. My understanding that this is both, to combat fraud where fake tickets are sold (well, real ones but bought with fake or stolen payment methods) as well as people using tickets other than their own. The latter is theoretically prevented by checking photo ID, but almost nobody does that in practice.
So they force the app because it's slightly harder to fake than just copying the QR code. I don't think you'll get a more open system here unless the underlying vulnerabilities are fixed in some way. And you'd probably need to embed photo ID information in the ticket somehow to prevent multiple people from using a ticket, and I doubt that will happen for privacy reasons.
My NFC public transport ticket cards that I've been using over the last 20 years across two cities I lived in all had my photo printed on them, so I don't think it's a big deal to encode it in the ticket. These days you could even just link it to/sign it with electronic IDs instead.
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.
And for some transactions that makes sense. But for something that is supposed to serve everyone, and where there is a (natural) monopoly, that cannot be and acceptable answer.
Also, having your entire economy depend on companies that are not under your control, and that are even actively being weaponised, that seems like a stupid thing to do.
Also, nothing in all of that precluded a web app.
It'll take a couple of years but people will figure it out eventually.
Others already answered why you're wrong so I won't repeat it; just wanted to point out how your comment reads like a silly "you may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like" meme.
There are operational issues with phones (e.g. batteries running out).
This has nothing to do with handling cash. It is to do with the elimination of paper tickets for monthly passes. Where I live you can pay cash for one off tickets, but they refuse to sell you paper monthly tickets.
why are they so focussed on "monthyl paper tickets"? are these any different to daily paper tickets?
Yes, they are good for a month and you get the monthly rate which can be much less than the daily rate. In my area the difference is about 20%
Its even greater where I live for some people. My daughter was able to get a young person's tickets last year for unlimited bus travel within the county (not sure whether it was all bus companies, or just the biggest) for £80/month whereas individual fares were more quite a lot than that each just into town and back on weekdays.
I don't think Kelly is asking for the price advantages of paying monthly.... I think they're asking why are bus companies so hot and bothered about not selling paper monthly tickets when they don't apparently object to selling paper daily tickets?
Exactly, thanks for clarifying!
Over here in Europa you get bombarded with the monthly/yearly subscription. And for companies it makes much more sense, regarding cashflow/projection etc.
Yes, they're worth more.
A single ticket has to be printed and used in the space of a few hours. A monthly pass can be printed at any time and sold until the beginning of the month, for a much higher price. Much more risky for the transportation company.
Err how can a ticket be sold at a higher price towards the end of the month?
Isnt it that ticket price should somehow decrease?
Say you have a fancy printer and can print fake monthly passes. You can print a hundred fakes today "dated" November 23, valid for December 2026, and sell them until the end of November to people who can use them in December.
Ie. the end of the month November, not the end of December. I suppose you could also sell the remainder at a discount in December.
Cheaper per ride over the month usually.
> The actual answer is there's operational cost to handling cash, or payment methods beyond the ones that cover 99.9% people well.
Overhead handling cash is understandable, but otherwise the point makes no sense.
If you use an app, you probably have an account in some database someplace that holds your contact, billing, and balance information. That account has to be available online for the app on people's smartphones via API calls.
You also need a web portal: if someone loses/breaks their smartphone, and they need to re-install their app, they need to be able to login without the app to perhaps get their credentials again to attach to their app.
That backend has to be able to handle automated monthly payments, as well as manual top-ups via debit, and even cash for those not comfortable with giving payment information:
* https://www.gotransit.com/en/ways-to-pay/many-ways-to-pay-us...
The effort needed to be able to register/handle NFC cards is not much more than having to register/handle the NFC system on smartphone wallets:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_fare_collection
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calypso_(electronic_ticketing_...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIPURSE
In many cases the cards came first and were later addable to various e-wallets:
* https://prestocard.ca/en/products/presto-on-iphone
* https://prestocard.ca/en/products/presto-in-google-wallet
Are you implying that there isn't an operational cost for maintaining the infrastructure to support cashless payments or that it's cheaper? Unless I see actual numbers I am not convinced and that 1% you mention sounds completely random to me and not really "the true answer".
If paying cash is more expensive for a company then so be it. One should not be forced to pay extra simply because one uses the official method of exchange provided by the State.
If legal tender is offered as a method of exchange then it should automatically be the best (least expensive).
Frankly, what's happened here is outrageous. By not legislating and outlawing this practice we've another instance of government ineptitude.
Agreed, and I would like to see practices such as these challenged in court. On grounds of consumer law: unreasonably burdensome terms are not allowed, on grounds of not discriminating against people who do not wish to use a smartphone. If the judiciary does not see any law applicable; representatives should enact it. We must not be penalized for wanting Big Tech OS out of our personal transactions using .... legal tender!!! Disgraceful state of affairs.
How does that compare to the operational cost of developing an app, maintaining an app, paying for the infrastructure behind it, and having the payment processors take their cut, operate customer support etc?
That's a public service that should serve everyone, no ?
You dont have to handle cash directly, you can have kiosks that are dedicated to adding cash to a public transit card and they will solve the problem you are talking about.
Who collects the cash? Who maintains the kiosks?
First: You can have kiosks (in central locations like metro stations) or you can have dedicated points like where a market collects the cash and they add the balance that way. Second: The public transit company. we aren't splitting the atom here.
Ah, and those services are free?
In London you can top up your Oyster card in many small shops. Maybe someone here can confirm what the financial arrangement is - my assumption is the shop doesn't charge the operator as they get the benefit of more customers spending on other items.
Are the credit card transactions free?
Cheaper than managing cash, which is the relevant comparison.
Contractors. There are companies that provide cash handling and equipment maintenance services.
Then why should I have to pay more if I don't use Apple's and Google's smartphones? I use a GNU/Linux phone. Web app would work flawlessly.
True in theory, except in many places that Web app comes packaged inside a Web view.
I wish we could live in a world where everything wasn't optimized to make the most amount of money with the absolute bare minimum of costs. What a world we could live in if convenience, quality and enjoyability of a product were taken into account instead of how a business can save $1 to buy the CEO another private jet.
Public busses aren't a luxury, so this doesn't matter.
Making all the allowances for wheelchairs and the blind costs way more, yet you don't charge them more.
That is even if it were true enough to matter, which it's probably not, and there were no other ways to address it, which there absolutely are.
It's not the real reason but it probably is given as part of the excuse, while the real reason is either simple thoughtlessness, lack of consideration, developers doing whatever is easiest, and/or all the same reasons that cash is being gradually more and more disfavored across the board in all things. You can track and control people sooooo much better without anonymous offline cash.
Probably both. Some people involved are doing it for the first reason, and others are allowing it for the second reason. It's just super convenient synergy for everyone except the consumers.
> The actual answer is there's operational cost to handling cash...
Really? From TFA:
If the reason were "operational cost to handling cash", you'd expect that cost to be substantially less for the one where you handle cash only once per month than the one where you have to handle it four times per month, no?I don't know Britain, but in my part of America the extra costs of taking credit cards are so high that most gasoline (petrol) stations give a ~3% discount to customers paying with old-fashioned paper cash. And I know little grocery stores with signs by their register, asking customers to please pay with cash - because margins are tight, and the bank takes an X% cut of every credit card payment and a Y% cut of every debit card payment.
Well from what I've heard folks in US frequently revert credit card transactions, something almost impossible to do with same companies in Europe for example (tried it once, got automated feedback email in 2 weeks and nothing happened).
Just life frequent insurance accidents, this raises overall costs. May be some other forces too of course
It is possible in Europe with credit cards and with SEPA Direct Debit (commonly used for recurring debits such as subscriptions), but indeed regular bank transactions are difficult to reverse. To me this is the big benefit of credit cards and Paypal: it gives the consumer real leverage when disputing a transaction, and it shifts some of the burden to resolve the issue to the vendor.
That is illegal in the UK.
I don't' know what "that" you're referring to, but in the USA it is against the payment processor agreement to give a discount for cash. So not illegal, but a contract breach.
> ...but in the USA it is against the payment processor agreement to give a discount for cash. So not illegal, but a contract breach.
This may be true, but State and Federal law prevail. In California, this [0] looks to be the relevant regulation:
Most mom-and-pop places I shop at here in San Francisco either offer discounts for paying in cash or have signs up suggesting that folks pay in cash so the business keeps more of the transaction.[0] <https://law.justia.com/codes/california/code-civ/division-3/...> The official place to find this would probably be [1] , but that's super down for me at the moment, so I link to something unofficial.
[1] <https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...>
In the UK it is actually against the law.
To give discounts for cash or for the payment processors to charge above 0% from the sellers?
A discount for cash is the same as an extra fee on cards.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/finance-and-tax/making...
(Yes, I know UK isn’t in EU anymore but pretty sure their rule is legacy from EU)
Id guess the discrimination itself between these two things and putting it in a contract?
The gas stations doing it have large, permanent roadside signage displaying the different prices for "Cash" vs. "Credit". So there may be exceptions in the fine print of those payment processor agreements. Or the gas stations all know the laws giving them such rights, which the agreements can't override. Or something.
[dead]
Older people cost the NHS more than younger people but tax rates are the same so yes we can do socialism and it can be a good thing!
£264.00 per year, per head extra, is operational theft, and it will be MUCH higher than 1% of rides, and further more , cash rides will exist in perpetuity as there is NO OTHER WAY to deal with edge cases and contingencies of public transport, making the 'extra' cost look more like some wienie frustrated managers little play at despotism.
And?
Why shouldn't this (small) cost be mutualised? Why should everything be tuned and customised and priced to every single individual characteristics?
There's also operational cost to handling tons of different situations of people in every practical way of life.
EDIT: my point is that practicality is a clumsy way of disguising the fact that there is a objective, political choice behind it.
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.
Recently took a bus from an airport in Nordrhein-Westfalen.
Had to install an app, create an account with the bus agency, give way too many of my personal details including address and phone number. Needed a smartphone, internet connection, German-compatible digital payment method (2 out 3 payment methods did not work).
This was a surreal experience. It literally took me about half an hour of struggling my way through a half-baked Germlish app to buy a single ticket, for a trip that I will probably make only once in my life. When the bus came, a very long line formed because, of course, most people assume you could just buy a ticket with the driver. I felt quite bad for this driver who probably had to deal with this every day. This particular bus only went once every two hours. It made me wonder whether any tourists had arrived there, waited 1½ hours for the bus, only to be rejected because they did not have a ticket and could not bribe the driver with physical euros. The airport apparently had no exchange offices.
Compare: when I took the bus in Montenegro, I gave the bus driver a 2 euro coin and stepped inside the bus and it went.
In most countries we had functional paper ticketing systems which were cheap, easy to understand and provided privacy. But they had to be replaced because . . . apps are cool???
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.
These store discount coupon apps are a plague, and then often things don't even work (like login etc). The other day the radio aired an Aldi ad advertising some on sale items "cheap without an app". That's the way to go.
Yeah, know that one, obviously trolling Lidl,given how much they push their app versus others.
We have a Penny store around the corner, and that's the one that often logged me out and made problems, so I just stopped using it.
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.
The article is about the cost and availability of passes. The cheaper passes are apps.
Depends on the area, but many places in the UK have weekly fare caps so it ends up functionally equivalent to a transport pass.
I have the same issue but regarding paying for groceries. I have to pay more because I don't have access to the grocery store's coupon app because I don't use a smartphone.
People with the app are paying with their person Al data. Seems like a fair deal.
It would be fair if people actually knew all the privacy implication. They don't though.
That's exactly what loyalty programs are. You sell your data for a discount on purchases. It's not even a secret, that's the actual goal of loyalty programs.
Yup, that's what I said. I was not implying it was a secret.
But I mean that's regardless of whether you use an app or a barcode.
Not really, I still have physical fob with barcode.
Not sure if this is the case here, but it might be that you pay in data if you use the app.
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.
> Because the transit authority has to work at taking your fare.
Then why did they remove the option that has them "work[ing] at taking your fare" once per month and leave in the one that has them doing that four times per month?
Hell, one can pay cash on the bus itself for a ticket to ride the bus. If cash-handling were the motivation, that'd be the first to go... the author of TFA mentions "First's weekly bus pass" and that they're in Scotland. This leads me to a company called "FirstGroup", which operates "First Bus" and "First Train". First Bus has this to say [0][1] about acquiring tickets on a bus:
Again, if it's actually about the work of taking the fare, you'd expect the fares that are the most work to gather to be the ones to move to "Payment via Google Android or Apple iOS only" fares.[0] <https://www.firstbus.co.uk/buy-tickets/buy-ticket>
[1] You might note that First Bus says it operates in England and Ireland but makes no mention of Scotland. IDK why that is, but this Scottish tourism website [2] links straight to First Bus's website to answer the question "Where can I find accessible bus and coach travel in Scotland?", so I believe the omission of a mention of Scotland to be an oversight.
[2] <https://www.visitscotland.com/travel-planning/bus-coach>
I wonder how the costs of "working at taking your fare" measure up to just eliminate that work, and accept that people ride public transport for free and is paid from public funds, as they have decided in Luxembourg (where there is ample tax revenue) and Belgrade (where people have historically refused to pay, then the city made it official policy).
Do not discount the many benefits, which might be difficult to quantify!
What is the non-standard OS that the writer is using?
Graphene or similar, probably. Annoyingly a tonne of apps lock themselves out of working on it.
Could be postmarketOS, Mobian, PureOS or similar.
It is punishment for not carrying a govt surveillance and tracking device. Wait you're carrying one anyway?
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...
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.
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