Why do UK bus operators not use basic measures used everywhere else to speed the service?

[Non Multi]

... again elsewhere buses now have contactless but the driver seemingly still has to press several buttons to activate the reader so you can scan your card!

Ticketer machines seem to be set by default to... cash payment.

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What the industry needs is punters back on buses again (London included), before worrying about stuff like dwell times.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Ticketer machines seem to be set by default to... cash payment.

When hardly anyone is paying cash any more, this is madness.

What the industry needs is punters back on buses again (London included), before worrying about stuff like dwell times.

Do you not think that journey times (affected by dwells) might figure in terms of whether the bus is attractive or not?

Before saying "but traffic", my car also gets stuck in the same traffic. What it doesn't do is stop every 200 yards for between 30 seconds and 5 minutes while a succession of people have a chat and negotiate a financial transaction. And nor does a bus in London, either - stops, even busy ones, take 10-20 seconds.

 

[Non Multi]

Do you not think that journey times (affected by dwells) might figure in terms of whether the bus is attractive or not?

Before saying "but traffic", my car also gets stuck in the same traffic. What it doesn't do is stop every 200 yards for between 30 seconds and 5 minutes while a succession of people have a chat and negotiate a financial transaction. And nor does a bus in London, either - stops, even busy ones, take 10-20 seconds.

Not when there's hardly anyone getting aboard a bus at present. You're actually more likely to encounter the bus driver stopping for several minutes to keep to the timetable.

A lot of improvement measures are going to be rolled out with the 'Buses Back Better' schemes anyway, assuming the whole thing isn't quietly binned if there is upheaval in Downing St.

 

[Kremlin Stooge]

Not when there's hardly anyone getting aboard a bus at present.

But that is not true everywhere, the buses I have used today, in Bristol, have had a steady flow of passengers on and off. The road traffic was sufficient to cause unlooked-for delays. Faster ticketing, or boarding, or other magical mitigations would not have made one iota of difference.

I very much doubt that congestion is more serious in Bristol than central London

I repeat, come to Bristol, and I will wish you: “Good. Luck. With. That.”

 

[181]

Another issue with smart tap on ticketing with automatic fare caps is that as well as a very expensive back office infrastructure you have to have a flat fare in place unless you also have a tap off requirement which complicates things, impacts on customer experience and possibly safety too. If you have a flat fare then inevitably short journeys will become expensive, unless like London you have a hefty taxpayer subsidy.

[My bolding]. Yes, it seems to me that there are a number of problems with tap-on/tap-off:

What happens if you forget to tap off? Unlike with railway stations, most people are not used to the concept of having to 'check out' in any way from a bus, and while regular users will presumably soon get used to it, there's a risk of giving occasional users a bad experience that will deter them from becoming regulars -- you can imagine people saying things like 'I tried getting the bus into town once, but I found out afterwards that they'd charged me £10 for a 2-mile journey, so I always drive now'.

If you want to use capping or something to retain the benefits of return tickets, day tickets, etc., then even with a flat fare there will need to be a system behind the scenes to work it all out (unless such tickets continue to be sold by the driver).

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that ideally you should be told how much you're going to be paying before you commit to paying it, and if that's not practicable, you should certainly at least be told at some point. If I remember rightly, the system that my local operator used briefly (only for single tickets) a couple of years or so ago gave no indication of the fare at all -- the only way to find out was to ask the driver or check your bank account afterwards. For me this was just an annoyance, but there will be some bus passengers who have to watch every penny:

...a poorer demographic where financial pressures means they struggle to pay up front for anything other than utilities and so it's a more hand-to-mouth existence.

 

[Bletchleyite]

What happens if you forget to tap off? Unlike with railway stations, most people are not used to the concept of having to 'check out' in any way from a bus, and while regular users will presumably soon get used to it, there's a risk of giving occasional users a bad experience that will deter them from becoming regulars -- you can imagine people saying things like 'I tried getting the bus into town once, but I found out afterwards that they'd charged me £10 for a 2-mile journey, so I always drive now'.

People cope with it elsewhere.

If you want to use capping or something to retain the benefits of return tickets, day tickets, etc., then even with a flat fare there will need to be a system behind the scenes to work it all out (unless such tickets continue to be sold by the driver).

Hardly difficult.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that ideally you should be told how much you're going to be paying before you commit to paying it, and if that's not practicable, you should certainly at least be told at some point. If I remember rightly, the system that my local operator used briefly (only for single tickets) a couple of years or so ago gave no indication of the fare at all -- the only way to find out was to ask the driver or check your bank account afterwards. For me this was just an annoyance, but there will be some bus passengers who have to watch every penny:

The key with this is you capture the majority, as that's how you speed things up.

 

[markymark2000]

You don't need either. Because they are now scanned, they can be marked used. Thus it no longer matters how many copies of them there are*. Like railway e-tickets, they could be offered in all manner of formats, e.g. inside the app, on an Apple Pay card, on Google Pay etc, so they are always ready when needed in a customer-convenient manner.

* Bit more complex with seasons, but it is not difficult, through "big data" based reporting, to work out the patterns of usage that showed that one season was consistently being used by multiple people, and to set up inspections in the right places to catch it.

I love how you say that yet tickets on train apps need you to log in and activate.

Ticketer provides many improvements, but at present in this specific regard is not fit for purpose due to a combination of being quite slow to read cards and because of the cack-handed process by which they are read (that is, putting one on too early requires the transaction to be reset, taking valuable seconds). However, as it is modular and software-based, these matters should be fixable quite easily, and would be if the bus companies piled on pressure about the costs (that they seem not to recognise) caused by stopping at a bus stop for any more time than is required for passengers to physically board and alight.

They recognise the costs but they also know that it's not as bad as you are making out. You say it as if 2 people getting on a bus takes 5 minutes and with dual doors, people will teleport from the bus stop into a seat on the bus.

I'm not even going to reply to the rest of the message because it's fighting a losing battle.

I hate how apps don't have the functionality to just buy a ticket from A to B (day tickets are probably cheaper of course if making more than 1 return trip but still), so you have to ask the driver for a ticket to B and they have to faff about on their machine to find the stop/fare

Tap on and off is the answer I suppose but has been poorly implemented, on Transdev in Harrogate for example the reader is past the driver so slightly awkward to tap on without the driver thinking you're after a free ride!

In London I step on a bus, scan my debit card on the reader which takes less than a second to validate and I sit down, again elsewhere buses now have contactless but the driver seemingly still has to press several buttons to activate the reader so you can scan your card!

Depends really as many 'returns' are now replaces with day tickets so in many cases, it would still work for returns but you do make a good point. Some of the newer 10 trip tickets (or whatever number is used these days) are on apps only and so that helps things but I don't think it's worth it for operators to have every single ticket type online and I think part of that stems back to operators not publishing information on fares because it helps competition. Hopefully as fares start becoming simpler, this sort of thing will be made easier.

Tap on, tap off, when I was in TrentBartonLand, it seemed to work ok as far as interaction with drivers. I think it's just a case of getting used to it.

The London Oyster readers are decent, that is one thing I would give credit to London/TFL for (one of few things I give them credit for), if they were using the Ticketer machines down there, dwell times in London would be up 200%. Unless there is a set flat price, someone still has to put through the product to ensure you get charged the right price. You have to scan your products in the supermarket, you have to add your items to the cart on Amazon. It's the same thing. Vix is the best one for it to be fair. Press the ticket needed, tap your card. Ticketer it is significantly slower.

I think those people might change their mind if they visited somewhere like London and worked out that it could easily make their hour's journey into the big city ten minutes faster. Other than those who are riding the bus for the enjoyment of it, whose needs should not be considered in designing a public transport system.

Yes, it makes that much difference on long, busy urban routes.

I can tell you for 100% certain that even on some of the busiest urban routes, it would make no difference whatsoever because 98% of stops are pick up or drop off only, not both.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I love how you say that yet tickets on train apps need you to log in and activate.

Only if the TOC is using the outdated m-ticket format. With an e-ticket, I add it to my Apple Wallet on purchase, then it is available without logging in.

They recognise the costs but they also know that it's not as bad as you are making out. You say it as if 2 people getting on a bus takes 5 minutes and with dual doors, people will teleport from the bus stop into a seat on the bus.

Nowhere am I saying that. I'm simply pointing out that it's unnecessarily lost time which is gained back by efficient ticketing and (to a lesser extent) dual door.

I can tell you for 100% certain that even on some of the busiest urban routes, it would make no difference whatsoever because 98% of stops are pick up or drop off only, not both.

Dual door makes no difference on that style of urban route where you pick up only all the way to the central bus station where everyone gets off and do the same in reverse on the way back. It has benefits on the increasingly common "cross city" routes, or routes where you have stops where people both board and alight.

Tap in, tap out contactless ticketing (or anything else that speeds it up, such as improving the incredibly clunky way Ticketer handles debit cards) does make a difference on such routes, but less so on regional routes like the Oxford-Bedford X5.

 

[tbtc]

If you want to experience how things are, try sitting on the kerb-side seats right at the front of a bus, where you can see how (in)efficiently the driver manages with the flow of passengers/ requests/ journey types, you get a great flavour of how life is at the coal face

You'll see how some people don't feel confident getting their wallet/ bank card/ phone out until they've stepped onto the vehicle (and, fair enough, given how valuable a mobile phone is or how easily you could help yourself to hundreds of pounds of goods with a £100 contactless limit, a lot of people aren't confident to hold these things out on a busy pavement where you might have several strangers in a line behind you

Maybe you're a big bloke who never gets into any bother but put yourself in the position of a more vulnerable passenger, they'll not want to stand in that queue with their bank card/ purse/ mobile phone easily grabbable

As for second doors... they'll work on certain routes but not others. And modern operators are averse to either having a bespoke fleet for a handful of routes or vehicles that can't be cascaded onto other routes - we've had enough problems in the past with articulated buses, we are about to have problems with the uncascadable NB4Ls - provincial operators have enough to worry about without ordering bespoke vehicles that can't be easily swapped onto other routes

They are mostly not doing any of those things, and as such we can conclude they are quite happy with PVRs* being higher than necessary and the passenger service being slower than it could be

Right, so you work for a bus company.

Do you have tap-on, tap-off contactless in operation?

If not, you clearly don't care enough about dwell times, because on a busy urban route that's costing you 5-10 minutes on every single trip.

This is almost Corbyn-esque in the way that you dismiss anyone who doesn't share your obsession with a solution as somehow not caring about the problem!

It really doesn't. Select route number/direction. Select boarding stop from a list of all stops on that route. Select alighting stop from a list of all stops after the previously selected one. Be shown fare. Click to pay. Get barcoded ticket on phone.

It is about as simple as you can possibly imagine compared with railway ticketing, and railway tickets are sold via apps.

You're overlooking the rather major difference that people plan rail journeys much further in advance, whereas you might see the bus coming down the road and decide to head home rather than wandering round one more shop or having one more drink - some bus journeys are a lot more spontaneous than train journeys

And you can board a train without having to show your ticket at the door, and then alight from the train without having to scan anything either - imagine the queues on platforms if all rail passengers had to faff about with that

I very much doubt that congestion is more serious in Bristol than central London, though I accept it might be bad

I don't live in Bristol, so have no dog in this fight, but Bristol congestion is some of the worst of any British city I've been in

It's maybe because so much middle/longer distance traffic is filtered through a couple of major roundabouts (?), but it's dreadful

Whereas anyone doing a longer distance journey will avoid central London

What it doesn't do is stop every 200 yards for between 30 seconds and 5 minutes while a succession of people have a chat and negotiate a financial transaction. And nor does a bus in London, either - stops, even busy ones, take 10-20 seconds.

The people who want to have a five minute conversation with the driver tend to be the ENCTS pass holders who already have a fast means of boarding though

[My bolding]. Yes, it seems to me that there are a number of problems with tap-on/tap-off:

What happens if you forget to tap off? Unlike with railway stations, most people are not used to the concept of having to 'check out' in any way from a bus, and while regular users will presumably soon get used to it, there's a risk of giving occasional users a bad experience that will deter them from becoming regulars -- you can imagine people saying things like 'I tried getting the bus into town once, but I found out afterwards that they'd charged me £10 for a 2-mile journey, so I always drive now'.

If you want to use capping or something to retain the benefits of return tickets, day tickets, etc., then even with a flat fare there will need to be a system behind the scenes to work it all out (unless such tickets continue to be sold by the driver).

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that ideally you should be told how much you're going to be paying before you commit to paying it, and if that's not practicable, you should certainly at least be told at some point. If I remember rightly, the system that my local operator used briefly (only for single tickets) a couple of years or so ago gave no indication of the fare at all -- the only way to find out was to ask the driver or check your bank account afterwards. For me this was just an annoyance, but there will be some bus passengers who have to watch every penny:

Agreed

Boarding a bus is already daunting for irregulars - the stress of potentially paying a fiver for a mile long journey because you forgot to tap out in the queue of people leaving a bus (or the "reader" didn't work) is going to put even more off!

Plus there's then the confusion that on some journeys you wouldn't need to "tap out" because you were getting off at the city centre terminus (so you'd be paying the maximum fare from the stop that you commenced your journey at), but on other journeys you'd be severely penalised for not doing so (e.g. if I board a bus from Rotherham to Rawmarsh then it might be a local one that loops round the housing estates before heading back into Rotherham or it might be one that continues on to Barnsley/ Doncaster, so failing to tap out (because you have a dozen people behind trying to get off the vehicle) might make no difference (since your single fare is already the maximum fare on that local bus) or might cost you a couple of quid more (because the bus continues beyond Rawmarsh to distant towns)

It sounds a good idea in theory, but it really depends on the size of networks - one of those "solutions" that sounds lovely paper to the kind of people without regular experience of a variety of bus networks but much harder to implement

 

[Starmill]

Parking the debate about fare collection for one second, I note that the door issue comes up frequently.

A key reason why most non-London bus operators don't want to use a bus with a second door is the loss of the four seats. Your might think "well its only four seats" but that's a meaningful capacity on some sizes of vehicles. On the longer double deckers I agree that it really doesn't make that much difference. The Enviro400XLB is a good example of a bus with 100 seats and two doors. Indeed it's the sort of thing that could work really well on some routes in places like Leeds but they don't seem to be trying it on.

There's also the old chestnut about fitting unfolded buggies onto the bus. More difficult with the second door.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Jan 2022 ==

Agreed

Boarding a bus is already daunting for irregulars - the stress of potentially paying a fiver for a mile long journey because you forgot to tap out in the queue of people leaving a bus (or the "reader" didn't work) is going to put even more off!

It seems to work without too much trouble on Brighton & Hove, where I've used it. Most of the people on the bus were tourists...

 

[ChrisC]

If you want to experience how things are, try sitting on the kerb-side seats right at the front of a bus, where you can see how (in)efficiently the driver manages with the flow of passengers/ requests/ journey types, you get a great flavour of how life is at the coal face

You'll see how some people don't feel confident getting their wallet/ bank card/ phone out until they've stepped onto the vehicle (and, fair enough, given how valuable a mobile phone is or how easily you could help yourself to hundreds of pounds of goods with a £100 contactless limit, a lot of people aren't confident to hold these things out on a busy pavement where you might have several strangers in a line behind you

Maybe you're a big bloke who never gets into any bother but put yourself in the position of a more vulnerable passenger, they'll not want to stand in that queue with their bank card/ purse/ mobile phone easily grabbable.

A real good point which I’ve tried to make before when people have been discussing the benefits of using contactless instead of Oyster when travelling around London. I’m in my mid 60’s but feel that I’m from a generation where a bank card was something that you took great care of and kept it securely tucked away in a safe place. Maybe it’s not just generational but also because I’ve mainly always lived in a village and large cities are places that I feel less safe walking the streets.

Whenever I go to London my bank card is kept in my wallet which is kept in a secure place, usually in a zipped up pocket in my jacket or a zipped up compartment in my bag. I find it quite amazing that people walk around with their bank cards in their hands touching in and out as they enter and leave busy tube stations. It’s something that I just wouldn’t feel safe doing and even try to keep my Oyster Card in a very secure place in-between using it. I therefore fully understand why some people may also feel hesitant using contactless cards and expensive phones when boarding buses. I’m pleased to say that when boarding the bus in the village where I live it doesn’t actually worry me getting out my phone.

 

[Cesarcollie]

Only if the TOC is using the outdated m-ticket format. With an e-ticket, I add it to my Apple Wallet on purchase, then it is available without logging in.



Nowhere am I saying that. I'm simply pointing out that it's unnecessarily lost time which is gained back by efficient ticketing and (to a lesser extent) dual door.



Dual door makes no difference on that style of urban route where you pick up only all the way to the central bus station where everyone gets off and do the same in reverse on the way back. It has benefits on the increasingly common "cross city" routes, or routes where you have stops where people both board and alight.

Tap in, tap out contactless ticketing (or anything else that speeds it up, such as improving the incredibly clunky way Ticketer handles debit cards) does make a difference on such routes, but less so on regional routes like the Oxford-Bedford X5.

Two points:
1. One of the reasons Ticketer readers are ‘slow’ is because they are ITSO compliant which was what Government wanted, particularly for ENCTS passes. Oyster readers in London aren’t ITSO compliant - this effectively means the ‘reading’ of each card is much quicker. But it’s also the reason ENCTS passes won’t scan in London!
2. some local authorities - Essex as an example - don’t allow two door buses on tenders. So whatever the other merits of 2 doors might be (and generally they’re only worthwhile where you have large urban areas where at many stops there are both boarding and alighting flows as Bletchleyite has said above) it’s very restrictive to have a fleet that can’t be used on tendered work.

 

[Starmill]

A real good point which I’ve tried to make before when people have been discussing the benefits of using contactless instead of Oyster when travelling around London. I’m in my mid 60’s but feel that I’m from a generation where a bank card was something that you took great care of and kept it securely tucked away in a safe place. Maybe it’s not just generational but also because I’ve mainly always lived in a village and large cities are places that I feel less safe walking the streets.

Whenever I go to London my bank card is kept in my wallet which is kept in a secure place, usually in a zipped up pocket in my jacket or a zipped up compartment in my bag. I find it quite amazing that people walk around with their bank cards in their hands touching in and out as they enter and leave busy tube stations. It’s something that I just wouldn’t feel safe doing and even try to keep my Oyster Card in a very secure place in-between using it. I therefore fully understand why some people may also feel hesitant using contactless cards and expensive phones when boarding buses. I’m pleased to say that when boarding the bus in the village where I live it doesn’t actually worry me getting out my phone.

Nearly everyone who has a smartphone now has the ability to deactivate a card remotely.

For the most security-conscious out there, many banks permit the Contactless limit to be lowered, or the function disabled entirely.

With these security measures in place it's really, really not a concern having your bank card out in public.

Of course, you might say that you have a bank card but no smartphone. The question there is can you really afford not to have one?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Jan 2022 ==

I therefore fully understand why some people may also feel hesitant using contactless cards and expensive phones when boarding buses.

Honestly this really just isn't a concern unless you're mainly making the point for whataboutery.

 

[carlberry]

Nearly everyone who has a smartphone now has the ability to deactivate a card remotely.

For the most security-conscious out there, many banks permit the Contactless limit to be lowered, or the function disabled entirely.

With these security measures in place it's really, really not a concern having your bank card out in public.

Of course, you might say that you have a bank card but no smartphone. The question there is can you really afford not to have one?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Jan 2022 ==


Honestly this really just isn't a concern unless you're mainly making the point for whataboutery.

All of this isn't a concern FOR YOU, it doesn't stop it being a concern for other people. Also you appear to be suggesting that, to make people feel safe to have a bank card out when boarding a bus, they could employ the security measures of disabling the contactless facility; which makes it somewhat difficult to then use it on a contactless reader!

 

[Starmill]

All of this isn't a concern FOR YOU, it doesn't stop it being a concern for other people. Also you appear to be suggesting that, to make people feel safe to have a bank card out when boarding a bus, they could employ the security measures of disabling the contactless facility; which makes it somewhat difficult to then use it on a contactless reader!

The disabling of the card remotely is to assist you immediately if your card is lost or stolen, not to prevent use entirely. Obviously.

It's got nothing to do with me personally. If your view is that a contactless card is risky, that's fine but obviously you'd have that view in respect of everything, and keep using chip and pin or cash as appropriate. But in so doing you accept there are things that you can't do. Obviously there's a role to play in protecting the unbanked here and there are various solutions that could help. HSBC are currently doing a trial. But it is wrong to expect that transport providers will stick with slower options just because people dislike the replacement.

For what it is worth I thought that London Buses should have continued to accept cash for years longer than they did. At least until 2020. However, by 2022 we are now in the kind of space where enough other retailers are using a no cash policy that it's reaching critical mass and bus companies can start to do away with it.

 

[PeterC]

The disabling of the card remotely is to assist you immediately if your card is lost or stolen, not to prevent use entirely. Obviously.

It's got nothing to do with me personally. If your view is that a contactless card is risky, that's fine but obviously you'd have that view in respect of everything, and keep using chip and pin or cash as appropriate. But in so doing you accept there are things that you can't do. Obviously there's a role to play in protecting the unbanked here and there are various solutions that could help. HSBC are currently doing a trial. But it is wrong to expect that transport providers will stick with slower options just because people dislike the replacement.

For what it is worth I thought that London Buses should have continued to accept cash for years longer than they did. At least until 2020. However, by 2022 we are now in the kind of space where enough other retailers are using a no cash policy that it's reaching critical mass and bus companies can start to do away with it.

Your remarks have nothing to do with the physical security of the card, wallet or phone which was the point being made.

I certainly prefer to use Oyster as, like ChrisC, I can keep my main card wallet secure in an inside pocket in crowded situations.

I have no issue over using contactless but at a shop checkout or at a petrol pump you do not have dozens of people milling about in close contact to you.

 

[ChrisC]

Your remarks have nothing to do with the physical security of the card, wallet or phone which was the point being made.

I certainly prefer to use Oyster as, like ChrisC, I can keep my main card wallet secure in an inside pocket in crowded situations.

I have no issue over using contactless but at a shop checkout or at a petrol pump you do not have dozens of people milling about in close contact to you.

That’s exactly the point that I was trying to make. I also have no problem using contactless in shops and many other locations. I don’t mind using bus tickets on my phone or using my phone for e-tickets when travelling by train. I also have no problems using contactless to pay for a day ticket or to load a ticket onto a smart card when boarding the first bus of the day. It’s just using my bank card when travelling on the tube and hopping on and off buses in London and other busy cities that I’m not so happy about. It’s just as much an issue of how easily it could be lost as being stolen. I know that contactless can be stopped quite quickly but it’s just the whole inconvenience of having to replace a missing bank card that I’m concerned about. Unlike some people who have a number of payment cards I only have the one which I would also need to pay my hotel bill etc. As I said before it’s perhaps partly a generational thing with some people.

 

[johncrossley]

There's also the old chestnut about fitting unfolded buggies onto the bus. More difficult with the second door.

In other countries buggies normally board at the second door, which is directly across from where the buggies are stored, so is more convenient. This happens even when you have the driver checking tickets, such as in the Netherlands. Of course, the driver still monitors if the card is being validated using the mirror and if the passenger needs to buy a ticket then the passenger goes to see the driver after parking the buggy.

 

[markymark2000]

Only if the TOC is using the outdated m-ticket format. With an e-ticket, I add it to my Apple Wallet on purchase, then it is available without logging in.

It's Trainline who does it, not even a TOC.

Dual door makes no difference on that style of urban route where you pick up only all the way to the central bus station where everyone gets off and do the same in reverse on the way back. It has benefits on the increasingly common "cross city" routes, or routes where you have stops where people both board and alight.

Tap in, tap out contactless ticketing (or anything else that speeds it up, such as improving the incredibly clunky way Ticketer handles debit cards) does make a difference on such routes, but less so on regional routes like the Oxford-Bedford X5.

Tap in, tap off will only make some difference, I don't think it will be life changing. Infact, when I was on the Trent Barton Skylink, it felt like it slowed us down as 4 consecutive people had to tap off before alighting. My experience is possibly not the same as everyone elses but it was my experience. I think it can work at times but other times it may be just as slow as normal ticket buying when averaged out.

As for your comments on dual doors being no slower when 'alighting only', you are mistaken but as someone else pointed out, you are very much like a politician where anyone who doesn't share your view is wrong and if you say something enough times, perhaps you will believe yourself or someone else will start believing you.
Rear doors take around 6 seconds to close from the time of pressing the button to being able to set off.
Front doors, even with door lock, take around 4 seconds from pressing the button to setting off.
Every second counts!

1. One of the reasons Ticketer readers are ‘slow’ is because they are ITSO compliant which was what Government wanted, particularly for ENCTS passes. Oyster readers in London aren’t ITSO compliant - this effectively means the ‘reading’ of each card is much quicker. But it’s also the reason ENCTS passes won’t scan in London!

That raises the question though why Vix machines are so much quicker and Transmach machines marginally quicker. Transmach is only slowed down by the silly ticket printer which prints towards the driver, not the passenger.
I know that one of the things which slows down Ticketer is the fact the driver selects the ticket, you then have to place your card on the reader, the machine then has to recognise it, the driver then clicks to approve the card payment rather than cash payment. It's the additional step of the driver having to approve the payment which has it's pros and cons. It enables issues to be resolved prior to the payment processing but for the 99.9% of occasions where there isn't an issue, this means nothing and does add additional dwell time.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's Trainline who does it, not even a TOC.

Nope. All of the TOC booking sites do it, only some of which are operated on their behalf by Trainline.

That raises the question though why Vix machines are so much quicker and Transmach machines marginally quicker. Transmach is only slowed down by the silly ticket printer which prints towards the driver, not the passenger.

There hasn't been a well designed ticket printer since the old Wayfarers. All of them require some degree of waiting or faff - with a Wayfarer you grab and pull as soon as the ticket starts to emerge.

You could, and I often did, pay for a ticket using exact change with a Wayfarer without breaking step. As you start to board, loudly saying "40 please"*, as you get within arms reach of the tray the 2 20ps are chucked in, then your left hand grabs the ticket without even stopping. Tech should be faster than that.

* No prizes for guessing the route

I know that one of the things which slows down Ticketer is the fact the driver selects the ticket, you then have to place your card on the reader, the machine then has to recognise it, the driver then clicks to approve the card payment rather than cash payment. It's the additional step of the driver having to approve the payment which has it's pros and cons. It enables issues to be resolved prior to the payment processing but for the 99.9% of occasions where there isn't an issue, this means nothing and does add additional dwell time.

Yes, this is a terrible piece of design and costs quite a lot of time - also because the card has to be removed before the fare is rung up, which causes confusion, and confusion costs time. It's ridiculous that no "modern tech" solution other than London's is quicker than exact change cash paid into a farebox.

 

[RT4038]

If you want to experience how things are, try sitting on the kerb-side seats right at the front of a bus, where you can see how (in)efficiently the driver manages with the flow of passengers/ requests/ journey types, you get a great flavour of how life is at the coal face

You'll see how some people don't feel confident getting their wallet/ bank card/ phone out until they've stepped onto the vehicle (and, fair enough, given how valuable a mobile phone is or how easily you could help yourself to hundreds of pounds of goods with a £100 contactless limit, a lot of people aren't confident to hold these things out on a busy pavement where you might have several strangers in a line behind you

Maybe you're a big bloke who never gets into any bother but put yourself in the position of a more vulnerable passenger, they'll not want to stand in that queue with their bank card/ purse/ mobile phone easily grabbable

As for second doors... they'll work on certain routes but not others. And modern operators are averse to either having a bespoke fleet for a handful of routes or vehicles that can't be cascaded onto other routes - we've had enough problems in the past with articulated buses, we are about to have problems with the uncascadable NB4Ls - provincial operators have enough to worry about without ordering bespoke vehicles that can't be easily swapped onto other routes





This is almost Corbyn-esque in the way that you dismiss anyone who doesn't share your obsession with a solution as somehow not caring about the problem!



You're overlooking the rather major difference that people plan rail journeys much further in advance, whereas you might see the bus coming down the road and decide to head home rather than wandering round one more shop or having one more drink - some bus journeys are a lot more spontaneous than train journeys

And you can board a train without having to show your ticket at the door, and then alight from the train without having to scan anything either - imagine the queues on platforms if all rail passengers had to faff about with that



I don't live in Bristol, so have no dog in this fight, but Bristol congestion is some of the worst of any British city I've been in

It's maybe because so much middle/longer distance traffic is filtered through a couple of major roundabouts (?), but it's dreadful

Whereas anyone doing a longer distance journey will avoid central London



The people who want to have a five minute conversation with the driver tend to be the ENCTS pass holders who already have a fast means of boarding though



Agreed

Boarding a bus is already daunting for irregulars - the stress of potentially paying a fiver for a mile long journey because you forgot to tap out in the queue of people leaving a bus (or the "reader" didn't work) is going to put even more off!

Plus there's then the confusion that on some journeys you wouldn't need to "tap out" because you were getting off at the city centre terminus (so you'd be paying the maximum fare from the stop that you commenced your journey at), but on other journeys you'd be severely penalised for not doing so (e.g. if I board a bus from Rotherham to Rawmarsh then it might be a local one that loops round the housing estates before heading back into Rotherham or it might be one that continues on to Barnsley/ Doncaster, so failing to tap out (because you have a dozen people behind trying to get off the vehicle) might make no difference (since your single fare is already the maximum fare on that local bus) or might cost you a couple of quid more (because the bus continues beyond Rawmarsh to distant towns)

It sounds a good idea in theory, but it really depends on the size of networks - one of those "solutions" that sounds lovely paper to the kind of people without regular experience of a variety of bus networks but much harder to implement

People will get used to Tap on-Tap off. It will take a bit of getting used to, and will probably slow the service down for a while as passengers have to be explained to. @Bletchleyite will probably get very annoyed during this fairly elongated process, but it will eventually come right! Yes, it probably would be better if every bus in the country did the same system (tapping off), but that is not going to happen any time soon. Let's not put obstacles in the way that are not really there.

There won't be any 'confusion' that on some journeys you don't actually need to tap out. One rule - tap out for every journey!
Most of those who don't like using their bank card will be convinced eventually, especially when the ease of transaction is realised, and multi operator/ capping is developed and introduced.

 

[Andyh82]

I don't think double doors will make much of an impact on speeding up journeys, the number of seconds lost where passengers can't board because people are alighting, excluding at the terminus must amount to seconds. All it would take would be for an elderly person or a wheelchair user to board and take ages to get settled and any time saving would be lost. There are few stops where many people are boarding and alighting at the same time.

You also end up with the situation, particularly on double deckers where there are barely any seats at a low floor level with the majority of space taken up by the stairs, the buggy bay and the second door.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There are few stops where many people are boarding and alighting at the same time.

Depends very much on the route. In larger cities it is very common. In smaller towns, less so.

 

[Starmill]

I don't think double doors will make much of an impact on speeding up journeys, the number of seconds lost where passengers can't board because people are alighting, excluding at the terminus must amount to seconds. All it would take would be for an elderly person or a wheelchair user to board and take ages to get settled and any time saving would be lost. There are few stops where many people are boarding and alighting at the same time.

You also end up with the situation, particularly on double deckers where there are barely any seats at a low floor level with the majority of space taken up by the stairs, the buggy bay and the second door.

Very common indeed in places like for example Newcastle, where a huge number of routes run cross-city with layovers at the edge of the suburbs and not in the centre. Few people would ever use them end-to-end.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Very common indeed in places like for example Newcastle, where a huge number of routes run cross-city with layovers at the edge of the suburbs and not in the centre. Few people would ever use them end-to-end.

Other than some of the Northern PTE areas where spending on bus stations is still favoured, this is increasingly the norm, with bus stations sold off for housing development and layovers at the roadside in quiet areas at each end.

 

[richw]

A key reason why most non-London bus operators don't want to use a bus with a second door is the loss of the four seats. Your might think "well its only four seats" but that's a meaningful capacity on some sizes of vehicles.

There’s a bigger issue with double doors. For some reason they are configured so that the wheelchair access ramp is only fitted to the centre door. These can’t be used in the majority of bus station designs that are drive in reverse off style as the middle door doesn’t get ‘platformed’.

 

[MotCO]

I've an idea to speed up card payments on buses. Firstly, you need to have a special bus card, but it can be the existing Oyster/ Mango / Go Key etc. Each bus needs to be geo -fenced inside. You swipe your card at the drive to prove that it is an active card. Then GPS / geofencng determines where you got on and off the bus and charges you appropriately. No need to tap in as such (with the delays others have spoken about) ( but you do need a quick swipe to prove it is a live card) and no need to tap out.

I'm sure others will find fault with it, but it is a different approach.

However, the quickest way to speed up buses is dedicated 24/7 bus lanes. (24/7 because, as I've known to personal cost, it is very difficult to compute whether a bus lane is active as you drive past in a strange town, and try to work out whether bank holidays are included!)

 

[Bletchleyite]

I've an idea to speed up card payments on buses. Firstly, you need to have a special bus card, but it can be the existing Oyster/ Mango / Go Key etc. Each bus needs to be geo -fenced inside. You swipe your card at the drive to prove that it is an active card. Then GPS / geofencng determines where you got on and off the bus and charges you appropriately. No need to tap in as such (with the delays others have spoken about) ( but you do need a quick swipe to prove it is a live card) and no need to tap out.

I'm sure others will find fault with it, but it is a different approach.

Not sure how this would actually work with a card? It could be done with a phone, and Swiss railways are doing it mentioned above somewhere I think.

However, the quickest way to speed up buses is dedicated 24/7 bus lanes. (24/7 because, as I've known to personal cost, it is very difficult to compute whether a bus lane is active as you drive past in a strange town, and try to work out whether bank holidays are included!)

I completely agree that more well-designed dedicated infrastructure is needed, but it is not an either-or.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I don't think double doors will make much of an impact on speeding up journeys, the number of seconds lost where passengers can't board because people are alighting, excluding at the terminus must amount to seconds. All it would take would be for an elderly person or a wheelchair user to board and take ages to get settled and any time saving would be lost. There are few stops where many people are boarding and alighting at the same time.

You also end up with the situation, particularly on double deckers where there are barely any seats at a low floor level with the majority of space taken up by the stairs, the buggy bay and the second door.

I made this very point. You end up with perhaps only 8 step free seats, and vehicles with relatively low capacities. Yes, you might be able to save a vehicle from the PVR through reduced dwell times (but it's marginal if you can do it) but not much point if you then have a 65 seat decker (which is typical in London) rather than a 75 seater that then demands you put in another vehicle anyway.

And then you have the issue of centre doors with ramps where, because it's been the accepted practice, some bus stations have been so designed to only accommodate single door vehicles as @richw mentioned

Very common indeed in places like for example Newcastle, where a huge number of routes run cross-city with layovers at the edge of the suburbs and not in the centre. Few people would ever use them end-to-end.

Less common than you'd think. Newcastle is an example where you do have cross-city services but they really don't exist in Birmingham or Liverpool - the latter for obvious reasons of geography. In some places, like Bristol, cross-city routes have largely (with a few exceptions) been severed as congestion has increased.

In Greater Manchester, they have relatively few cross-city routes in Manchester. They are more likely to have central hubs or bus stations such as in Bolton; there are a few long-distance routes that traverse half the county (like the 471)

Other than some of the Northern PTE areas where spending on bus stations is still favoured, this is increasingly the norm, with bus stations sold off for housing development and layovers at the roadside in quiet areas at each end.

Not certain if this is increasingly the norm. In the "provinces", most company-owned bus stations are long gone, and arguably, they were never used for cross-town services anyway. Places like Salisbury or Southampton had bus stations but they didn't have local routes.

However, the quickest way to speed up buses is dedicated 24/7 bus lanes. (24/7 because, as I've known to personal cost, it is very difficult to compute whether a bus lane is active as you drive past in a strange town, and try to work out whether bank holidays are included!)

Something I've been banging on about for ages (sorry folks) but even a 7/7/7 basis (i.e. 0700 to 1900, 7 days a week) would be better than the piecemeal pattern of ones. In a number of places, they are 1630 to 1900, so they don't even cover the school run! Now that would certainly speed up bus services!!

 

[ashkeba]

Your remarks have nothing to do with the physical security of the card, wallet or phone which was the point being made.

I certainly prefer to use Oyster as, like ChrisC, I can keep my main card wallet secure in an inside pocket in crowded situations.

I have no issue over using contactless but at a shop checkout or at a petrol pump you do not have dozens of people milling about in close contact to you.

Put your transit payment card in the back of your glove, in a sleeve pocket or one of those runners armbands on your forearm. Even the front bottom corner of your bag should work in most locations. Contactless should mean you don't need to get a card out.