London's Oystercard Gets New Contract, But Same Suppliers 143
nk497 writes "Over the summer, the London travelcard ticketing system — called Oyster — fell over twice, forcing the transport authority to offer free travel to the six million Londoners using the system. After that, it cut its contract with the supplier of the system, a consortium called TranSys. But now, Transport for London has signed a new contract to replace the TranSys one — with the same two companies that made up the TranSys consortium. Sure, that should fix everything."
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Damaged RFID cards (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do the cards need to be writeable in a way that can cause permanent damage?
Re:Because... (Score:4, Insightful)
When you get the weather forecast, since you don't know the meteorologist's job it will seem like he is incompetent when you get rained on in what is supposed to be a sunny day. Your expectations of their abilities clouds your understanding of what can really happen.
The same things happen in the IT world. When those in charge have clouded vision (some even wear bloody blindfolds) they will have no useful understanding of how to manage an IT project. I believe that in the London area this is not the first demonstration that government types are fairly blind to how to successfully complete a major IT project. In fact, there have been so many stories of such blindness from London that it makes one wonder how they planned to use IT to manage all those cameras.
Anyway, when you only know two companies that want to do the job... whose CEOs happen to drink in the same club that you do..... errr well, a change in name should be good enough. After all, it worked for those blokes who make voting machines in America. Right!
Tracking (Score:2, Insightful)
Better not mention that this card will enable the authorities to track all travel. They have already got rid of paying by cash on a lot of bus routes, forcing cash payers to pay twice as much as the Oyster payers to "encourage" the card use. To aid this, they have recently got rid of the pre-pay paper *1 tickets under disguise of mass fraud *2. Also children under 16 get "free" *3 travel using Oyster whilst data is actually being secretly collected for the governments ID card system.
*1: They were offering travel using these tickets the same price as the Oyster system.
*2: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/faresandtickets/singlefares/2904.aspx [tfl.gov.uk]
*3: Free as in other sucker taxpayers paid for their privilege.
Re:FYI (Score:1, Insightful)
Well theres yer' problem!
Re:Damaged RFID cards (Score:3, Insightful)
> The system is asynchronous, with the current balance and ticket data held electronically
> on the card rather than in the central database.
This is remarkably stupid.
Re:Damaged RFID cards (Score:3, Insightful)
Transmit a powerful enough signal to them, and you fry the chip.
So if I walk through a facility with my Chip Frier(TM) I can just wantonly destroy
any RFID chip that stands in the way of me and my goal? That seems bad.
Re:UK transport a disgrace (Score:2, Insightful)
At least you have fucking mass transit.
Stupid Slashdot Stories (Score:5, Insightful)
So the Transport organization formed a new contract with the same parties that failed them before. HOWEVER, the new contract is much more robust, with many more protections for the transport authority, and many more penalties for the provider if and when they fail.
So what exactly wrong with this? That someone who screwed up got a new contract?
Let me say that there are very few organizations that have the ability to deliver ANY service in this area. Having a contractor with a track record and some history of failure doesn't mean that the contractor aren't the best choice for the job.
Is this corruption or stupidity? Likely not. This is simple business.
Re:Damaged RFID cards (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, with a server-side solution, you just have to make sure that every turnstile can call a central server and process a transaction in less than 200ms. This includes the turnstiles in buses and in remote locations...
Truth is, every transportation system with more than a few fixed turnstile stores the rights of the user locally, in the smartcard chip. Of course, transactions logs are analysed every night and it is usually possible to detect incoherences between the values stored in the card and the reference value stored in the server. In that case, the ID of the misbehaving card is placed on a "hot list" and the card cannot be used anymore.
Of course, this works only if you use real cryptographic algorithms (like 3DES or AES) to protect the content of the card instead of relying on a vendor's snake oil.
Re:UK transport a disgrace (Score:4, Insightful)
You have a system in London that supports 4.5 million riders a day, in a city of 7.3 million. That's nearly 2/3 of the population.
Here in America, most of our major metropolitan areas have abortive mass transit systems that support closer to 1/10th of their population. Diesel buses are the workhorses of our transit systems and carry the vast majority of our transit commuters. Most are standing-room-only, thanks to the gas prices of the past few years and infrequent service. Most of our metro areas are just now starting to build small light-rail transit lines to supplement the bus service.
Be thankful you don't live in the Atlanta or Phoenix areas. At least you can get to "some back of beyond town" on your system. On ours, you're lucky if it's even theoretically possible to do a weekday commute.
Re:UK transport a disgrace (Score:1, Insightful)
At least you have fucking mass transit.
Agreed.
Granted, the GP makes their public transit system sound like a horrible mess. But one would assume that you would periodically be able to get from $POINTA to $POINTB using public transit.
Large parts of the US have absolutely no public transit at all. Nothing. Nada. Not even a horrible mess. I live in one such place.
We don't have busses, we don't have trains, we don't have a subway. There are taxis that you can hire, but they hardly count as public transit. And due to America's obsession with personal transportation and urban sprawl nothing is within walking distance.
All of which means that I am basically required to own a car of some sort - I can't get to work without one, I can't go grocery shopping without one, I can't get anything done without one. So I'm spending money on gas, and insurance, and periodic maintenance... Just to get to and from work.
I'd happily ride a bus, or train, or whatever... I'd much rather do that than have my own car. But that simply isn't an option where I live. And it isn't an option in much of the US.
Re:UK transport a disgrace (Score:1, Insightful)
Be thankful you don't live in the Atlanta or Phoenix areas. At least you can get to "some back of beyond town" on your system. On ours, you're lucky if it's even theoretically possible to do a weekday commute.
I took a vacation to the UK a few years back. I was absolutely amazed with how well I could get around without renting a car or hiring a taxi.
It was possible for me to get on a train in the middle of London and get off the train in some quaint little town out in the middle of nowhere.
Here in the US that just does not happen. If you live in a big city you might be able to get from one side of town to the other... But if you live in some quaint little town out in the middle of nowhere there'll be absolutely no public transit anywhere at all. Not across town, not to a neighboring town, and not to a nearby city.
Here in the US there is an assumption that you will either stay close to home, or you will buy your own car and do your own driving.
That means that you are virtually required to pay for your driver's license... Buy a car... Pay for insurance... Pay for registration... Buy gas... Pay for periodic maintenance... All of which adds up to a fairly substantial cost.
Re:Trainspotting (Score:1, Insightful)
"Mandate all future bridges must be able to take a double decker train and slowly the restrictions of what can run on our tracks goes away...."
Sorry, how does this work?? Our bridges were built by the great Victorian engineers, and they didn't intend them to break down or be moved.
I live next to the main London-Birmingham railway, a few yards from a bridge built by Stephenson (Robert, not George). It was built in 1839, and has not been changed since. I expect it will stay like it is for at least 500 more years.
So mandating new bridges (and even harder, tunnels) would be a pointless activity...
Re:Damaged RFID cards (Score:2, Insightful)
It's really not stupid given that the oyster card has to work across the whole tube, bus, DLR and train networks, on hand-held devices that conductors carry around the busses as well as barriers, turnstiles and 100 different ticketing systems. The Oyster card system works exceptionally well given the millions of transactions that occur daily. Changing suppliers would be an incedibly difficult move to make given the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" rule.
pfft ... amateurs! (Score:1, Insightful)
As the saying goes, "citation needed" for your claims about mass transit systems in major U.S. cities.
New York City has an estimated 8.27 million people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City) and its subway/bus system moves an estimated 7 million people daily (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Transit_Authority). That's more than 8/10's of the population.
Re:UK transport a disgrace (Score:1, Insightful)
Are we living in the same city?
But transport in London and the rest of the UK is our real embarrasment.
Still better than any I've been to in Europe and, I'm told, better than any system my American friends have seen.
manned by minimum-wage slaves who can't speak a word of English
Sure, some of them have heavy accents; welcome to life in a city. I've never spoken to a tfl employee I couldn't understand, though.
and run by greedy, grossly incompetent asshats
Actually, I'm 100% with you there.
It's a dirty, unreliable, overcrowded, polluting, expensive, piss poor apology for a public transport system. On a good day.
What are your plans to raise revenue for extra cleaners, mechanics, vehicles, hybrid-engined replacements while keeping it cheap? Profits get skimmed from the city centres in order to provide services for rural areas, which could otherwise never afford it.
Roads and railways close at random.
With a mere several weeks' notice.
It has a staggering downtime. On any random day, particualrly at weekends, you will find whole subnetworks of the UK public transport system closed off due to 'engineering works'.
Again, "random" here meaning "typically given several weeks' notice, advertised along the route and on the timetabling websites". The railways, for example, aren't doing it to spite you. They're dealing with years of neglect to the tracks since privitisation handed responsibility for long-term investment and maintainance to a company whose interest was, naturally, in short term profits. The Tube is a similar story.
You'll often get stranded in some back of beyond town and need to hire a taxi, hitch-hike, sleep in a hotel (or if you have no money in a station).
Dude, learn to read the timetables and maybe make a contingency plan. Not everything is perfect in the real world, so plan around it.
The fare structures are unfathomable, even if you have a degree in maths and logistics just try working out the best ticket to buy.
...unless you go to, say, nationalrail.co.uk where the new, simplified fare structure is explained or just use it to find the cheapest route automatically.
They misrepresent contract law, making specious pseudo-legal announcements telling lies about where and when you must buy a ticket
I just plain don't understand this one.
Station staff who could once help you have been sacked and replaced with machines and ticket barriers.
I'm pretty sure this is part of curbing the expense you were complaining about above. Also, I've never seen a rail or tube station with operating barriers that didn't have at least one staff member on hand.
I honestly think they have an agenda to halt the entire country and make sure everyone stays in their homes.
A lot of mistakes have been made - the privitisation has been a nightmare - but why the conspiracy? Just accept that all big organisations
have inefficiencies, and that no complex system can be made perfect.
Re:Because... (Score:4, Insightful)
I would have to agree that the Oyster card has all-in-all been a success. I used to live in London in the late 90's and at peak times you would have 20-person queues at each barrier-gate as the millions of people who use the "tube" daily tried to insert their paper card in the the narrow slit.
Using the tube on recent holiday to the U.K. I noticed things certainly seemed to go smoother with the majority of people swiping a card above a sensor at much greater speed than previously.
This is an example of technology making things easier and more efficient for the end-user. Exactly what technology should do.
Re:Because... (Score:3, Insightful)