Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

Most of the time, at least, the good people at Transport for London really understand how public transport needs to work. (I've got some examples of when it doesn't work, which I'll show you again.) They've announced a new innovation this week, called the Hopper fare. I don't know how it would work in practice, but here's the blurb from the TfL website: Make a journey using pay as you go (contactless or Oyster) on a bus or tram, and you can now make unlimited bus and tram journeys for free within one hour of first touching in. Touch in using the same card on all the bus and tram journeys you make and the free fares will be applied automatically. Hopper fares apply to all pay as you go journeys. You can now travel on Tube, DLR, London Overground, TfL Rail, Emirates Air Line, River Bus or National Rail services between Hopper journeys, and Hopper fares will still apply. Hopper fares will not apply if your Oyster card has a negative pay as you go balance af...

Arriva Trains Wales conductors have recently been supplied with new handheld ticket machines, as the contract with the previous manufacturers had ended. The old devices used to produce credit card-sized tickets on fairly stiff card. They were the same size as those issued by the platform machines and ticket offices. This size: They fitted the plastic wallet you got from the ticket office when you first obtained your photocard. They went into the slot in the barriers and popped back out again, even if they were slightly creased. They easily lasted the whole month, and when they expired you could either put them in the recycling bag, use them as convenient bookmarks, or stash them in your wallet/purse for months (or years) on end, until your mates took the piss so much you ended up clearing it out. Then came the great leap forward. Sort of … We had to go to Merthyr on Tuesday afternoon. As it's much cheaper to travel by train than by bus (£3.90 vs £7.50), we decided the time differen...

An interesting article by Ian Steadman appeared in the New Statesman blog today. It's not directly related to South Wales, but its general thrust ties in with what I've been arguing for the past few months. Why not check it out? Public transport bodies: producing lots of data, not necessarily making the most of it , New Statesman , July 21, 2014