5 ms·

They are going away soon (TM), the tech is cool but they are impractical. I will be happy to use my credit card or phone. Too many times I have been stuck in 1

• rendx 2y ago
  I dread the privacy implications. No thanks.
  • vhcr 2y ago
    No need to worry about privacy, facial recognition already takes care of that.
    • akira2501 2y ago
      Is that admissible as evidence?
  • Sytten 2y ago
    What privacy implication? You already buy the NFC with a credit or debit card so if they want to track the card use they can.
    • lxgr 2y ago
      Many of the systems that account/payment card based ticketing is now replacing used to allow cash top-ups for their stored value cards.
      • sircastor 2y ago
        But you can still purchase these one-time use cards with cash? That’s the case with my local transit system. Are there places that are eliminating cash altogether?
        • lxgr 2y ago
          In NYC, there will soon be no more single ride tickets. There’s the OMNY card, and I believe the original plan was to outsource sales and top-ups to third-party stores, but lately I’ve also seen some vending machines for that in some stations, so maybe they’re going back a bit on that idea.
• speed_spread 2y ago
  You can refill them with the Chrono app since last March. No more queues. Can't do nothing about Laval and Longueuil though.
  • mardifoufs 2y ago
    Yeah they added refills but you can't use your phone as an NFC pass yet :(. I've always been curious to know more about why, you'd think if you can refill your Opus card with your phone, to then use it on the terminal, you could just skip the card step entirely but I'm sure it's not that simple!
    • Sytten 2y ago
      Yeah I wish I could buy the one way tickets there. I dont have an opus card.
    • vaughnegut 2y ago
      They're actively working on allowing you to just use your phone, iirc targeted for like 2026 or something. Basically, its' a work in progress and they delivered the update to the Chrono app as a stop-gap.
• kccqzy 2y ago
  It is theoretically possible to refill it with the phone. You either have a stored value card where the value is stored on the card and have the phone's NFC talk to it, or you store the value in a server that has an API to add value and have the reader at the subway deduct the value from the server.
  • Reason077 2y ago
    That’s exactly how online top-ups, and credits/refunds, work with the Oyster card system. In the old days you’d nominate a specific station, and the credit would be transferred to the card the next time you tapped in at that station. But now days I don’t think you need to do that: presumably it maintains the balance primarily on the server side now rather than on card.
    • lxgr 2y ago
      I think Oyster cards are still stored-value based, but I suspect that either the backend servers and connections are now fast enough to poll pending top-ups in real time, or they just fan out the pending top up dataset to all turnstiles. I remember using that feature in the SF bay area, and while it took a day for the top-up to actually propagate to all readers, it even worked on buses, so they must be uploading that data everywhere. That type of connection needs to be there in any system that supports lost/stolen card value recovery, in any case, since that's how card block lists are distributed.
      • Reason077 2y ago
        The Oyster card balance is certainly maintained online in real-time (or near to real-time) since you can view it in the Oyster card app/website. But yes, for speed/redundancy they are still probably using the stored value balance too.
        • lxgr 2y ago
          It's most likely near real time. TfL likely need that mechanism primarily to synchronize the list of blocked open-loop bank cards with unpaid balances to all readers. Faster Oyster transaction list updates and any-station remote top-ups are probably just a side effect of that. Clipper doesn't (yet) support open-loop bank cards yet, so for them, it's probably enough to update more remote readers every time the bus goes back to the depot, for example.
• lxgr 2y ago
  I agree in that they are much more convenient for tourists and occasional users, but when living in a city and taking public transit every day, I actually prefer stored-value cards, as there are still some advantages that arguably make them a better fit for the transit use case: - Full offline support (i.e. both the reader and payment device don't need network connectivity), making the system more resilient - Symmetric cryptography and highly optimized transaction flow, making reads more reliable and allowing faster customer flows through transit gates - Upfront transparency about charges, monthly passes, capping etc. – you immediately see your balance left after tapping. - No "transaction spam". This is more on my specific transit provider (NYC MTA), but I'm really not a fan of getting an individual credit card charge for every. single. tap. It can't be cheap in terms of fees for the operator either! At least other systems, like TfL in London, aggregate taps over a day, but it's still not great. Singapore's public transit agency recently attempted to switch from a stored value based model to an exclusively account based one, but had to backpedal quickly due to public outrage about the move. Ideally, a system supports both payment methods: Open-loop payment cards for infrequent users, and stored-value cards (both physical and in digital wallets) for heavy users and anybody else that prefers them. But realistically, maintaining both is too much of a burden for many transit agencies.
  • inkyoto 2y ago
    > I agree in that they are much more convenient for tourists and occasional users […] I would argue that contactless debit/credit card or mobile wallet taps are substantially more convenient for tourists and occasional users – if you are fresh off the boat (or off the plane – for a more modern twist), not much can beat the convenience of turning up at the turnstile, tapping on and getting on with the trip on the local public transport network and tapping off at the end of the trip. No need to look for a place that sells local rechargeable or disposable NFC cards, having to be aware of a low balance, looking for a place where the card can be topped up, actually top them up and stuff like that. For frequent travellers, it also entails having fewer non-portable mass transit payment cards to carry. Bonus points: debit/credit card/mobile wallet payments also eliminate the problem of the discovery and consolidation of lost balances when a card gets lost, and it reduces the environment impact (manufacturing + energy consumed during the process) and the wastage (the disposal or, rather, the lack thereof) that disposable NFC cards inherently possess. That is what Sydney (the one that is not in Canada) has done: they went straight from prepaid paper tickets to their own rechargeable Octopus/Oyster style cards (with the name also beginning with an «O» – Opal) followed by enabling debit/credit card (Visa/MC/AmEx) and mobile wallet NFC payments later within the larger metropolitan area public transport network on buses, ferries, trains and trams. Convenience, as always and of course, comes at the expense of privacy, though.
• jszymborski 2y ago
  > you cant refill them with an app You can now refill the rechargeable OPUS cards using an app.