A two-minute delay on the tube yesterday caused by being held at a red signal did not cause me to miss my connecting train home to Hersham last night, which arrived on time, so I will make no charge despite the ineptitude.
This morning, the train arrived in Waterloo a minute early, though this was not enough to allow me to catch an earlier connecting tube to Edgware Road. The intended (and travelled) tube arrived on time too, so there's no charge at all for this morning's commute either. Has TfL finally got its act together? Only time will tell...
What else is new today? Well, my old journalist friend (though I'm sure he'll barely remember me, if at all) Jack Schofield reports through ZDNet that we may after all be able to pay for TfL transport through near field communications ticketing on our smart phones in the near future. This is, of course, in complete contrast to previous mutterings by TfL that I have covered in the past. Jack also gives an uncharacteristic and gratuitous plug to O2's TrainTravel smartphone app, which is essentially the Trainline app branded by O2 (i.e. you can buy tickets on the app but you still have to go and collect a paper ticket before travel). Now, I'll admit I have a horse in this race, but that's a development that seems a complete waste of time to me, bringing as it does nothing new to the table.
Aside from that snide aside, it's pretty quiet today. Anyone read any good books lately?
Showing posts with label NFC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NFC. Show all posts
Thursday, 4 April 2013
Friday, 15 February 2013
How d'you like THEM apples?
This morning's train from Hampton Court to Waterloo was on time. Connecting tube to Edgware Road was a minute late, though, so it's £2.50 in penalties this morning.
Let's take a look at what else is out there.
Very nearly the 10th anniversary of the Congestion Charge (February 17th), and the AA has claimed that it has completely failed to cut congestion while it robbed motorists of some £2.6 billion. Mostly, this claim rests upon the basis that, while there are now fewer vehicles in central London, average traffic speeds have failed to rise as a result, leaving us somewhere in the region of the horse and cart.
Well, for speed anyway. The AA also claims (and other evidence would seem to support this) that air pollution has risen dramatically because emissions from brakes and tyres have shot up thanks to all the constant stopping and starting that must be done to make way for the various bus lanes, cycle and pedestrian safety measures, and roadworks that London's drivers content with on a daily basis. At least the worst we had with the horse and cart was big piles of shit.
And to round off, I invite you to visit IDG for news about allowing your mobile (cell) phone to become an Oyster card. In short, TfL's not interested. I've written before about how short-sighted I think this is, but I'd like you to take a read to see the attitude taken by TfL, and by its head of business development personally in particular.
Note the order of priorities for refusal:
If I were being uncharitable - and I were - I would say this sounds like the prevarication of a man who once stumbled his way into something that turned out to be impressive (Oyster) and is now terrified that anything else he does might foul up his 'legacy'.
Whaddya reckon?
Let's take a look at what else is out there.
Very nearly the 10th anniversary of the Congestion Charge (February 17th), and the AA has claimed that it has completely failed to cut congestion while it robbed motorists of some £2.6 billion. Mostly, this claim rests upon the basis that, while there are now fewer vehicles in central London, average traffic speeds have failed to rise as a result, leaving us somewhere in the region of the horse and cart.
Well, for speed anyway. The AA also claims (and other evidence would seem to support this) that air pollution has risen dramatically because emissions from brakes and tyres have shot up thanks to all the constant stopping and starting that must be done to make way for the various bus lanes, cycle and pedestrian safety measures, and roadworks that London's drivers content with on a daily basis. At least the worst we had with the horse and cart was big piles of shit.
 |
| Horse apples (Image credit: Eliya at flickr |
Note the order of priorities for refusal:
- It sounds complicated, so I won't do it until everyone else does the hard work for me. There's no way I want to be part of the solution and show TfL to be a forward-thinking organisation
- Other people want to be paid for helping to make this a reality. This is unacceptable. TfL should get all the money so we can hang onto our nice fat (because they're unjustifiably high, not absolutely high) salaries and perks
- I'm great because I was behind the Oyster card system, and I recently made it possible for people to pay for buses (and only buses) with contactless bank and credit cards. I particularly love this quote with reference to the latter:
"This is quite a revolution. Whether you're a visitor from abroad or in the UK, whoever you are, get the card out of your pocket and tap it on the reader and travel. So TfL becomes like every other merchant..."
Yes, it's a revolution to become like every other merchant. I hope stupidity isn't catching.4. I'm a little concerned about customer service issues if/when things go wrong
If I were being uncharitable - and I were - I would say this sounds like the prevarication of a man who once stumbled his way into something that turned out to be impressive (Oyster) and is now terrified that anything else he does might foul up his 'legacy'.
Whaddya reckon?
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
About last night... and this morning
UPDATE: two minutes' delay on the Bakerloo Line to Waterloo from Edgware Road and then four minutes' delay on the connecting train to Hampton Court. £10 (since the first delay doesn't count as I didn't miss the connection because of it.)
In reverse chronological order, just to confuse you.
Train into Waterloo delayed by three minutes. A further two minutes on the connecting Bakerloo Line. Seven minute delay against original arrival time in total.
Last night, a two-minute delay on the District Line to Wimbledon would have caused me to miss my connecting train, though that was happily delayed too. Arrived home seven minutes late.
7 + 7 =14 minutes, which is equivalent to £35. Ta muchly.
EXCITING NEWS: on Thursday, NFC payments go live on TfL buses. If you see someone smugly tapping their mobile phone against a reader, rather than an Oyster card, it could be Signal Failure. I pity all you technology have-nots.
Oh, and London's black cabs are to offer you free WiFi, as has been reported by nearly everyone and in a variety of languages. Just do a news search: I can't be bothered to pick a link, nor to use the likely ad-riddled service which would in any case make me feel travel sick.
In reverse chronological order, just to confuse you.
Train into Waterloo delayed by three minutes. A further two minutes on the connecting Bakerloo Line. Seven minute delay against original arrival time in total.
Last night, a two-minute delay on the District Line to Wimbledon would have caused me to miss my connecting train, though that was happily delayed too. Arrived home seven minutes late.
7 + 7 =14 minutes, which is equivalent to £35. Ta muchly.
EXCITING NEWS: on Thursday, NFC payments go live on TfL buses. If you see someone smugly tapping their mobile phone against a reader, rather than an Oyster card, it could be Signal Failure. I pity all you technology have-nots.
Oh, and London's black cabs are to offer you free WiFi, as has been reported by nearly everyone and in a variety of languages. Just do a news search: I can't be bothered to pick a link, nor to use the likely ad-riddled service which would in any case make me feel travel sick.
Monday, 26 November 2012
Back in the office
UPDATE: Despite leaving Paddington a minute early (unlucky for some!), my District Line train still managed to get to Wimbledon three minutes later than it should have. Fortunately, this didn't matter (to me) because I still made my connecting train to Hampton Court as it too was late in arriving (four minutes). That had lengthened to eight minutes by arrival at my final destination for a grand total of £20. The reasons for these delays were, respectively, none and inaudible. That's two squares for Tube Bingo.
Whew! Bit of a weird week, last week, what with barely being in the office! Still, so far as I'm currently aware, I'm in every day this week, including - controversially, Friday. So hopefully a lot more updates for all y'all.
Starting with this morning. No explanations at all, but five minutes late on the train coming into Waterloo, and another two on the connecting tube to Edgware Road. That's a total of seven minutes for £17.50.
In other, well, let's call it 'news', shall we?, do you remember the fanfare with which TfL rolled out Oyster? It was a good system, and a massive improvement on what went before. Probably necessary, despite the fact it was clearly of limited lifetime use because of some of the other ticketing technologies that were already being brought into play. Well, TfL's talking about contactless payment ticketing technology now (I don't know for how long, hence the use of the term 'news', but it'll be available next year). Basically, you can use your contactless credit or debit card as you would an Oyster to swipe in and out of the gates and buses, etc. Money for the trip hence goes direct from your account, with no need to top up cards, queue for tickets, and all that jazz.
That sounds awesome, but it's another stop-gap measure. TfL says it has trialled NFC technology (which would allow you to do the same but with your mobile phone) and finds it too slow. I know quite a lot about this because of my profession and, while that's more or less true for a high-volume, rapid-transaction system like the tube, it's clearly not always going to be so. And with more and more retailers supporting both payments and intelligent loyalty and vouchering schemes, it seems a foregone conclusion that the traditional wallet (including all its cash and cards and receipts) will migrate to the smart phone over the next few years, which means TfL ticketing is going to have to follow suit. It's already the case in buses in some locations outside of London. The difference is, it's harder to see this time why we, the customers should pay increased fares to fund this temporary and marginal improvement over Oyster - and then the one to NFC later, rather than just wait for NFC with trusty Oyster in place. TfL will tell you it's because they can realise savings in the cost of ticketing infrastructure, but do you think we'll see those savings passed on as cheaper tickets, or even a freeze on price increases? Don't hold your breath. Basically, this is just another sign of TfL's short-sightedness. Any savings they do realise (and I doubt there will be any, at least in the time frame before they rip out this system and replace it with NFC, particularly as they're not even removing Oyster) will line their own pockets. And, of course, the pockets of the constantly-whinging, overpaid staff.
Finally, on an "also in the news..." style vein, can someone please explain to me the basis for this being a story? While I don't doubt TfL Lost Property works hard, and while I agree these unclaimed toys are going to good use (though the partnering with the overtly religious - to the extent of not being above the occasional religious bigotry - charity the Salvation Army, rather than a more secular one is questionable in my book), why is it anything to shout about? What were TfL doing with the toys before? Destroying them?
Whew! Bit of a weird week, last week, what with barely being in the office! Still, so far as I'm currently aware, I'm in every day this week, including - controversially, Friday. So hopefully a lot more updates for all y'all.
Starting with this morning. No explanations at all, but five minutes late on the train coming into Waterloo, and another two on the connecting tube to Edgware Road. That's a total of seven minutes for £17.50.
In other, well, let's call it 'news', shall we?, do you remember the fanfare with which TfL rolled out Oyster? It was a good system, and a massive improvement on what went before. Probably necessary, despite the fact it was clearly of limited lifetime use because of some of the other ticketing technologies that were already being brought into play. Well, TfL's talking about contactless payment ticketing technology now (I don't know for how long, hence the use of the term 'news', but it'll be available next year). Basically, you can use your contactless credit or debit card as you would an Oyster to swipe in and out of the gates and buses, etc. Money for the trip hence goes direct from your account, with no need to top up cards, queue for tickets, and all that jazz.
That sounds awesome, but it's another stop-gap measure. TfL says it has trialled NFC technology (which would allow you to do the same but with your mobile phone) and finds it too slow. I know quite a lot about this because of my profession and, while that's more or less true for a high-volume, rapid-transaction system like the tube, it's clearly not always going to be so. And with more and more retailers supporting both payments and intelligent loyalty and vouchering schemes, it seems a foregone conclusion that the traditional wallet (including all its cash and cards and receipts) will migrate to the smart phone over the next few years, which means TfL ticketing is going to have to follow suit. It's already the case in buses in some locations outside of London. The difference is, it's harder to see this time why we, the customers should pay increased fares to fund this temporary and marginal improvement over Oyster - and then the one to NFC later, rather than just wait for NFC with trusty Oyster in place. TfL will tell you it's because they can realise savings in the cost of ticketing infrastructure, but do you think we'll see those savings passed on as cheaper tickets, or even a freeze on price increases? Don't hold your breath. Basically, this is just another sign of TfL's short-sightedness. Any savings they do realise (and I doubt there will be any, at least in the time frame before they rip out this system and replace it with NFC, particularly as they're not even removing Oyster) will line their own pockets. And, of course, the pockets of the constantly-whinging, overpaid staff.
Finally, on an "also in the news..." style vein, can someone please explain to me the basis for this being a story? While I don't doubt TfL Lost Property works hard, and while I agree these unclaimed toys are going to good use (though the partnering with the overtly religious - to the extent of not being above the occasional religious bigotry - charity the Salvation Army, rather than a more secular one is questionable in my book), why is it anything to shout about? What were TfL doing with the toys before? Destroying them?
Friday, 9 November 2012
Oops!
 |
| Mike TheCoolPerson |
I've got NFC payments enable don my phone. If you don't know what that is, I would suggest that you may as well just about go and kill yourself right now, but because I'm feeling merciful today, I'll explain: it's contactless payments for small amounts (no more than £20 at present). You know those contactless debit/credit/pre-paid cards that have been slowly increasing in circulation for a few years? Where you can just wave the card over the chip & PIN device thingy and it just deducts the money from your account, no change, no fuss? Well, now you can get it as an app on your phone. Assuming your phone is one of a limited (but rapidly increasing) number of devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S3 but, notably, not any of the iPhone iterations.
The phone doesn't even need to be switched on and it still works and you can manage your account from the app and everything. Pretty cool, right? And soon there'll be all sorts of loyalty and travel and ticketing and ID services on it too. Admittedly, I'm biased because I work in this industry, but I cannot wait until the full potential of this is realised. It's a little slow to take off at the moment, since retailers need to upgrade to contactless point of sales systems en masse before it can be used everywhere, but there are already many more places than you'd expect that you can do this. And that's bound to accelerate even more rapidly when Apple decides to pretend it invented NFC, I'm guessing (and I stress guessing - no insider knowledge) with the next iPhone iteration. Or to be fair, when clueless iPhone punter-slave-fans assume Apple invented it and Apple simply fails to correct them. Par for the course these days. Did you know, for instance, that Apple invented the rectangle?
What's all this got to do with TfL, I hear you asking. Well, hang on: I'm getting there.
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| Nectar of the gods |
Even more fun, I thought, to use my phone to travel the TfL network, instead of the sooooooooo 2011 Oyster card. Sadly, it's not possible to do that yet. So I cheated. I shoved my Oyster card behind the back casing of my phone: invisible, but effective. I thought. Capable of fooling the public and gormless TfL staff alike into thinking I, or at least my phone, had superhuman powers. I thought. Perhaps likely to lead to there being some sort of cult founded in my name. I thought.
Yes, all of these turned out to be true. OK, not the cult bit but do you have to be such a pedant? Sadly, there's very little space between the battery of an S3 and the back casing. Over the course of the last five days, the additional pressure bulging caused by the millimetre or so thickness of the Oyster card has kept causing the back case to come off, seriously damaging my street cred. I kept forcing it back on until, yesterday, it suddenly became much easier. Because the casing just snapped. Oops. Anyone have a spare?
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