May 2, 2008...6:39 am
Snapping good fun for bus geeks, if only I can get it going…
A new toy! The kind folk from Infratil have given me a Snapper card as part of the trial being run on their Go Wellington Route 17 buses.
As you get on and off, you flash the card past the scanners installed at the front and rear doors of the bus, and the cost of the fare (at 20 per cent off the cash price) is deducted from the cash value stored in the card.
Snapper cards will soon replace the 10-trip cardboard concession cards Wellington commuters have used for decades, and will likely replace the monthly Gold Pass by year’s end.
Two hundred regular Route 17 users have been given these credit-card sized red “smart cards” to trial, with a $60 credit. Snapper uses the same technology as the Octopus card in Hong Kong and the Oyster card in London, and the fishy name has been chosen deliberately to maintain the nautical theme.
You recharge them with cash by plugging a device they come with into the USB port on your computer.
They are meant to make getting on the bus faster, though from my observations of people using them when I’ve caught the 17 to work this past couple of weeks, the scanners do not always work properly. Yesterday’s 7.35am No 17 was so slowed down by this that the 7.50am almost caught up with it by Molesworth St. But that’s what a trial is for — to identify the bugs and fix them.
Infratil, the listed New Zealand company that is the majority shareholder in Wellington Airport and which bought the Wellington and Auckland Stagecoach buses in 2005, owns Snapper Services Ltd, which is marketing the card system. It won’t be just for bus fares — they are signing up cafes and shops so you can use the card to buy coffee, newspapers and other small purchases.
The trouble is, my computer refuses to read the device they gave me, despite the installation instructions being simple enough. So I won’t be snapping my way on to the No 17 today, I don’t have the time to mess about with the thing to try to get it going before I need to leave for work.
24 Comments
May 2, 2008 at 6:54 am
Replace gold passes?!
That effectively means raising the prices for regular commuters as many of us get a discount of a lot more than 20% by using a monthly pass.
May 2, 2008 at 8:33 am
Anita, If it is like the oyster in London, it allows a combination of discounts depending on what it stuck on the card, not just the standard 20% “10 trip” deduction, So I would not expect the goldcard reduction to be reduced.
Most of the clever stuff is done at the back end, ie on the Tube you can never pay more than the daily travel card price for a days travel using the oyster, it simply zero prices all travel once you hit the daily price cap.
As yogi bear would say snapper is smarter than your average smart card
May 2, 2008 at 9:09 am
I’d share Anita’s concern, since I’m a regular user of the Platinum pass. On a normal month, the concession price would leave me to over $200 of fares just getting to and from work. The $165/month is a cost I’m happy to pay.
As Gary said, there is a lot of software magic that would go into controlling the charges. The STARpass is a $10 cap on travel in one day, which is easy to translate into the action of the swipe card. Additionally, it wouldn’t be difficult to provide a range-check for the date: if it were in between the start and end dates for your purchased monthly pass, no charge is taken. However, it is up to the bus companies to work that in and work out the division of profits for users that jump on the first bus that comes past.
There is another side-effect of all of this: actual statistics of usage. The data collected can be used to improve the transportation network. Where and when are buses overloaded? How far are passengers going? Slightly less obvious: what happens to patronage when a bus leaves early/late?
Poneke: What sort of system requirements did the device need? Not everyone has a Windows-based computer to use. Will the truly geeky people be forced to use swipe cards instead? The website seems to be a bit quiet on that front.
[Poneke says: It only works with IE and ActivX apparently. That would appear a major flaw, but as this is only a trial of 200 people and one minor route, they should be able to fix this for the main roll-out. It is exactly the same technology as in London, Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore, apparently (and is a Korean system) so I suspect those places don't restrict it only to IE.]
May 2, 2008 at 9:41 am
The first few times I used an Oyster card in London, I took the card out to swipe it. Then I realised that I could leave it in my wallet and swipe the wallet. Eventually I found that I could leave the wallet in my jacket pocket and just kinda swipe the pocket of the jacket across the scanner. It was a BIG improvement over the old Travelcards.
May 2, 2008 at 9:56 am
A little poking around reveals that the Snapper signup page requires Internet Explorer on Windows, because it uses an Activex object.
Completely unacceptable in this day and age: insecure, inaccessible, not cross-platform. Our rates had better not be paying for this.
[Poneke says: No this is not coming from the rates. Infratil is behind it. I suspect the regional council is not very happy about it, too.]
May 2, 2008 at 10:11 am
“This page only works with Internet Explorer!”
I like the idea of a smart card. The idea of one I can’t actually use, not so much.
May 2, 2008 at 11:15 am
I’m looking forward to it. I’m only an occasional bus user (I mostly walk) and I rarely have much cash on me, so if I want to use the bus I have to have ten-trip cards with me for all the different zone distances I might use, which is a pain in the butt. Having one card for all zones will be much more convenient.
With any luck, this could eventually mean the end of the zone system, which leads to distortions at the boundaries (Hataitai to Courtenay Pl $2.50, for example), and would sometimes put people off using the bus if they’re right on boundaries. If you could snapper on and snapper off, they could charge micro-payments per stop or by distance, so that you can be charged smoothly for nearly the exact distance you travel.
And ideally this will be extended to trains as well for seamless ticketing. Well, ideally the trains would be extended for real seamless travel, but that will take a while and more political will than is around at the moment.
May 2, 2008 at 11:46 am
Stephen writes:
“A little poking around reveals that the Snapper signup page requires Internet Explorer on Windows, because it uses an Activex object.”
I agree. I never understand what it is with some programmers who think that if it works for Internet Explorer only, its OK. There are platform independent ways of doing these things…
May 2, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Systems like this are inherently bound up in tradeoffs, and the main one in play here is privacy v convenience. Essentially value for its deployer (Infratil in this case) comes from subscriptions paid by participants - Go Wellington at first, but eventually all the participating cafes, newsagents and retailers offering loyalty or subscription card-based benefits. This means customers are essentially trading a certain amount of personal information (where, when, and how often they travel, what, when and by which means they purchase what goods, and from whom, etc.) for convenience and loyalty benefits.
The folks behind Snapper obviously realise this and their privacy policy is pretty robust - though I still have some concerns. Chief amonst these is that the system is not anonymous by default.
RFIDs are inherently bad for privacy. The technology is by its nature prone to abuse by would-be surveillers, fundamentally because the mechanisms allowing use of the data, as laid out in the global RFID standard, are weak and have been broken. (I’m not sure what specific technology Snapper is using, so this may not apply directly - but it isn’t encouraging that they haven’t made the information public.) The FAQ (http://snapper.co.nz/faq.html) says:
“Can Readers read my Snapper without me knowing?
No they can’t. Readers can only read and process one Snapper at a time, and each time there needs to be a transaction. You need to wave your Snapper directly over the Snapper Reader on the bus or on the shop counter %u2013 it won’t read your Snapper from a distance!”
This might be true of Snapper’s readers, but it’s not true of all readers - they’re fairly generic electronic equipment. Anyone can, at fairly nominal cost, set up an RFID reader which can operate at much greater ranges than Snapper’s advertised 8cm. You probably already have RFIDs on you - I have one in my visa card, one in the card I need to swipe into my office, one in the tag of my Kathmandu thermal which I haven’t gotten around to cutting off yet, and probably others too. (I also carry two mobile phones, but that’s another story). In principle a `brand picture’ of me can be constructed from this information. The more devices are included, the clearer the picture becomes. But this is only of major concern when data can be correlated or `matched’ to particular people. Two layers of concern exist here.
There are ever-growing numbers of CCTV cameras around major cities - hundreds on lower Queen Street, according to a NatRad report yesterday, and I’d not be shocked to find out it’s the same all the way from Molesworth to Featherston. These are simply surveillance hazards of living in a place where people have valuable property to protect, but they magnify the surveillance risk in a certain way. In London and Hong Kong, one is required to show photo ID for some Oyster and Octopus card services. This, and CCTV footage, is what I’d call `low-level matching’ since it can only be done by human intervention (looking at footage and correlating timestamps), and therefore will only be done in high-value circumstances such as when investigating crime, searching for a missing person, etc.
High-level matching is where the data is embedded in a device and can be matched by computer. One device which facilitates this is the new biometric passports which NZ has been issuing for the past few years, which contain all the data on your identity page, for handy digital use. Carrying this RFID around with me could make my brand picture very close to complete, so it stays at home unless I’m going overseas (which happens less frequently than I’d like). Arguably even worse is the UK’s universal ID system being deployed soon.
And this is fundamentally my problem with Snapper. From the privacy policy (http://snapper.co.nz/privacy.html):
“a. Card ordering
When you order a Card, we will collect personal information from you, including:
* your name, delivery address, and phone number (for delivery purposes)
* payment details and preferences (for example, credit card or direct debit details)”
Why must it be delivered to me? Why can’t I just buy a blank card from any snapper outlet, load some credit onto it using folding stuff, and go about my business? If it really is just simply to be treated as virtual money, why must it be tagged to me?
Two higher levels of opt-in data-matching are presented: an Online Account, and Card Registration. These represent yet more privacy traded off for yet more functionality. It’s not like I’m paranoid, but privacy does have a slightly higher utility for me than does convenience, and I’m disappointed that Infratil and those behind Snapper have relied upon people accepting a fairly high privacy-to-functionality tradeoff ratio. I guess our public transport system is bad enough that we’re prepared to do what it takes to make it easier.
L
May 2, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Stephen & Heraclides,
“I never understand what it is with some programmers who think that if it works for Internet Explorer only, its OK.”
I’ll give you three words: arrogance, laziness & ignorance.
May 2, 2008 at 12:42 pm
`I’ll give you three words: arrogance, laziness & ignorance.’
Cf. Larry Wall’s three virtues of a programmer: Laziness, impatience, hubris.
http://threevirtues.com/threevirtues.html
L
May 2, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Whippersnapper said:
” If you could snapper on and snapper off, they could charge micro-payments per stop or by distance, so that you can be charged smoothly for nearly the exact distance you travel.”
In your dreams (said nicely and without sneering!).
If you think bus drivers are impatient and grumpy now, wait until they have to remember to push a button every time they stop (aside from the brake pedal and door openers of course).
I don’t know about Singapore, but London works quite well on zones. I agree it _would_ be nice to have smooth price transitions, but in reality it is a lot harder to implement than you might like to think. (especially if they can’t get the backend right!).
May 2, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Having worked in this area a few years ago I might be able to help with a couple of things.
The zone system was introduced with a future integrated ticketing scheme specifically in mind. So I doubt that they would scrap it now that the scheme exists.
There is a desire to extend the scheme to the rail system, but there are a few issues. Firstly, the rail system is owned by the council, who have reservations about the Infratil system (although from my understanding relations aren’t as bad as those in Auckland). Secondly, from a practical point of view the easiest way of doing this requires gated stations. This is possible at the Wellington station, but much more difficult and costly to put in place at all the other stations. The alternative is to have the scanners on board, as is the case for the buses, but this makes it extremely easy for someone to defraud the system (particularly given that one of the selling points is reducing ticket collectors). Poneke: how does this work on the buses - what would there be to stop someone swiping on and then swiping the card at the back door a stop later then getting off the bus at some later point?
While the computer based top up is one option (and it costs extra to be able to do it), the plan is for it to still be possible to top up at stores. Given that the card replaces 10 trips and makes it uneccessary to have multiple 10 trips for different zones it seems to me that it would make sense to put a decent amount on the card so trips to top up would probably be infrequent.
Personally I’m looking forward to the full roll out, and think, if done well it’ll be great. However, I’m more excited about the real-time bus time information that has been talked about for a while and is supposedly not too far away.
[Poneke: You ask: "How does this work on the buses - what would there be to stop someone swiping on and then swiping the card at the back door a stop later then getting off the bus at some later point?" Hmm, good point. The scanner emits a loud sound when you pass the card near it, so people would hear (and see) you doing this, and then maybe wonder why you didn't get off the bus. The driver's console also flashes and sounds, and the driver might also see you haven't got off the bus. I suspect the risk is about the same as people who over-ride a zone now. You can get caught. It would be better with a flat fare such as on London buses or Hong Kong trams -- then you'd only need to swipe once. But we are so used to the stage-fare system and would baulk at a higher fare for a short distance, even if it meant a lower one for longer journeys.]
May 2, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Seph D: Thanks: I just wasn’t just going to come out and say that
Lew: familiar too
A system designer (not necessarily the programmers under their wing) might say, look its less work (lazier) in the long term to implement it once in something that is platform-independent. They’re going to have to write that code twice now… There is laziness and there is laziness…
May 2, 2008 at 3:26 pm
OK, I did some more poking.
Now I understand that the Activex control is part of using some USB dongle that in turn reads the card.
Although I’m still outraged on principle, I can’t say that I’m interested enough in this model to care in practice. I share most of Lew’s worries about privacy. Snapper seem pretty concerned about __their__ security, but I’m most concerned about mine.
[Poneke says: They give you a little stick that pokes into the USB port... the card clips to it and it loads the card with cash from your credit card and does other stuff like set up txt alerts. Personally I would prefer to charge it with cash at a shop... I never take cash from my credit card and always pay it in full, and I think if I take out cash, even for a transfer like this, I would be hit with interest charges on the full monthly balance/]
May 2, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Yeah.. the privacy side of things will have to be sorted out before I’ll touch this with a bargepole. Oyster has become monstrously invasive and the police and security services in London are now seeking live real-time access to the database, instead of getting specific warrants based on investigating a relevant and specific case.
One wonders what the Privacy Impact Assessment done on the Snapper is and if the Privacy Commissioner has any comment to make on it in light of her comments this week after the Identity Management conference in Wellington.
May 3, 2008 at 12:59 am
Andrew: Yeah. We’re feeling a bit of policy lag here. A search of `RFID’ on the website of the Privacy Commissioner turns up precious little other than a couple of working papers from 2005/6.
Links:
http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2115 # indispensable RFID information from security/cryptography demigods RSA.
http://www.privacy.org.nz/assets/Files/6806566.pdf # EPC/RFID: The Way Of The Future, by NZ Assistant Privacy Commissioner Blair Stewart.
http://epic.org/privacy/rfid/#reduce # somewhat speculative and alarmist, but generally technically correct info about RFIDs, from the Electronic Privacy Information Centre.
Complicated business. I do think my post above sounds a mite paranoid. I’d probably use Snapper once it’s widely deployed, in spite of my concerns, though I mostly walk rather than use pubtrans. I might just have to register as Fred Smith. This might be a breach of Snapper policy, but hey, what do they care if they still get my cash?
L
May 3, 2008 at 12:03 pm
The RFID reader problem could lead us to the marketability of a little wire-mesh card holder. It would effectively stop RF communications from outside of the holder, but it would mean extracting the card in order to be used. I don’t mind the 2 seconds of activity required, instead of putting my whole wallet (and all of my cards) up against the reader. It’s about as much effort as it takes to flash my bus pass at the driver anyway.
By the sounds of it, the USB dongle wouldn’t be my choice. ActiveX rules it out for me to start with and I fullly agree with Poneke about credit transfers. I just don’t care to go there. Send me to a public top-up machine and I’m happy.
May 3, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Seamonkey Madness,
“In your dreams (said nicely and without sneering!).”
I’m not sure what you mean by the bus driver having to press more buttons to implement the “micro based on distance” not being part of the No 17 trial, but from what I understand about the technology, this should be very possible and can’t see there would be any requirement to have manual intervention to effect this function.
If Infratil had a mind too (or should I say Snapper Services) this should be very possible.
If it were to become a reality, I for one am with Whippersnapper. For the same reasons as outlined.
All it would take is to not have any “virtuous” designers or programmers.
May 3, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Quoting Lew, “* your name, delivery address, and phone number (for delivery purposes)
* payment details and preferences (for example, credit card or direct debit details)
Why must it be delivered to me? Why can’t I just buy a blank card from any snapper outlet, load some credit onto it using folding stuff, and go about my business?”
These aspects do concern me too, and are a serious factor in whether I buy into this technology.
I’m with you Lew, why have they built the system such that they “need” those details? They’d be better off using a paradigm (am I still allowed to use that word) based on the way cash currently is employed.
What is wrong with being anonymous?
May 4, 2008 at 6:05 pm
After the questions I and others asked, I looked a bit deeper into the snapper. I found the following comment in the snapper website:
“Call into one of our Snapper Agents: Top up your Snapper over the counter using cash or EFTPOS and it will be available for you to use immediately.”
This would seem to indicate that I can use the card anonymously.
Also registering seems optional.
May 4, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Seph: yes, you can top up anonymously. The issue is whether you can acquire a card anonymously.
Stagecoach in Auckland offered (probably still do) a rechargeable card that was not tied to your identity. That’s what I want to see in Wellington.
May 6, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Isn’t a solution to privacy concerns to organise a swap with someone? You still get to use a Snapper card and they get their usage stats without mapping back to your particular account.
May 6, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Further nosing around the Snapper website I found this:
“From June 2008 you can buy Snapper cards and Snapper Feeders at any Snapper agent, here online, or by calling the Snapper team …”
It seems you only have to part with personal info if you want to avail yourselves of the features that come with having a Snapper account.
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