Snapper became surreal for me today.
I needed to catch a train from Wellington to Petone for a lunch meeting, and on arrival at the station got out my wallet to pay the $3 each way fare. But the signs said they accepted Snapper, and I was able to pay with my Snapper card faultlessly.
Why this was bizarre and surreal is that Snapper has been introduced to pay one’s fare on Go Wellington’s yellow buses, yet most such buses do not accept it. For example, my No 17 bus to work today was not Snapper-enabled (again) despite the 17 having been used for months to trial Snapper before its claimed roll-out to the whole bus system some weeks ago. And my No 3 bus home also was not Snapper enabled.
Yet the trains, which have a separate ownership from the buses and which have never been advertised as accepting Snapper, were quite happy to take my fare by Snapper and did so.
What on earth is going on here?
33 Comments
July 29, 2008 at 7:50 pm
As far as I could tell (Wellington to Waterloo and back for a work meeting) I could have used snapper to pay for my ticket at Wgtn station, but not on the train or to buy a ticket at Waterloo.
July 29, 2008 at 9:13 pm
It looks like they have the ability to buy Snapper cards at Wellington Station, and that extends to buying other things at the ticket booths with your Snapper card.
But, like Anita noticed, I also don’t think that extends to any of the other ticket booths on the lines or buying tickets onboard a train.
If only the 25% Snapper discount extended to train tickets too…
July 29, 2008 at 9:18 pm
But, like Anita noticed, I also don’t think that extends to any of the other ticket booths on the lines or buying tickets onboard a train
But I was able to use my Snapper to buy a train ticket at the Railway ticket booth.
Yet it is almost impossible to use Snapper on a bus.
This was my point. Snapper was meant to be used on the bus. Yet you can use it for the train, which was never advertised as a possibilty. Only in contrariness.
July 29, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Poneke: Rpeat after me: “Private business is always more efficient.”
That’s why the government owned trains can take Snapper while the privately-owned buses can’ take their own payment system.
Never mind the evidence: “Private business is always more efficient.”
July 30, 2008 at 7:42 am
It is not just the roll out on the buses that seems very disorganised, but the roll out of the cards too… I ordered my Snapper card online last Monday – two days before they (officially) went on sale in shops. The money was taken from my account over a week ago, yet the card has not arrived. Three phone calls to Snapper have achieved nothing, as their call center staff do not appear to be able to tell whether they have shipped it or not, and the promised call from ‘Anastasia’, who appears to be the only one capable of finding out, has not happened.
Word of advice – if you want a Snapper, buy it from a retailer, not snapper.co.nz!
July 30, 2008 at 8:39 am
I think your headline is a bit misleading Poneke.
You cannot use your snapper on the train the same way as it is intended to be used on the buses. i.e. snap on, snap off (which sounds very Mr. Miyagi). You pay for your ticket at the booth, just like you would a latte or Wishbone meal.
But other than that – very bizarro.
July 30, 2008 at 10:06 am
These special function cards will prove to be an obstacle to convenience in the long run.
The strength of Visa etc is their universality. Imagine if you had to have a special card for a French restaurant (bus) and another one for an Italian restaurant. (train).
The overseas trend is to promote pre-charging on your regular card which can be read by a non contact reader and used on any transport facility – train, taxi, plane, ferry, jitney, bus or toll road. Tourists will soon be arriving here with these cards ( which are wonderful if you do not speak the language) and will be dismayed if they have to buy a snapper or a kowhai or a shark or whatever.
July 30, 2008 at 10:50 am
Hmmmm, could be mistaken, but I think this blog is a bit backwards… Snapper has two sperate functions as I can tell. First, use it to pay bus fare – you tag on and then off and that’s how the fare is paid – i noted that if you forget to tag off you are charged full fare to the end of the line… Second, Snapper can be used instead of cash at a shop that takes Snapper – like the railway… You can’t use Snapper AS your train ticket but can use it to BUT a train ticket… And truthseeker – hahahahahahaha – you crack me up – I’m sure you’re drunk….
July 30, 2008 at 12:35 pm
@Owen McShane
Kahawai (car-ha-why often mispronounce car-why) the fish is not the same as kowhai (cor-ph-eye) the tree.
Just as well maori language week is over.
I know it is off topic, but I thank you people (koutou) for your indulgence.
July 30, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Owen – if you talk to the GO Wellington folk they’ll tell you that they want to integrate fares and ticketing across modes (bus/train/ferry). Trains are probably the major obstacle of the three.
Given that most similar overseas card aren’t even transferable between states/regions etc, I find it hard to believe that there is a move for international portability. For a start, the costs seem very high for a tiny tiny benefit.
July 30, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Perhaps the Snapper card should be renamed the Flounder ..
July 30, 2008 at 2:17 pm
SephD,
Thanks for the correction. I “know” the difference but a straight early morning typo.
Be Shakey, the trend in such technology is for universality. All we are talking of is loading money on to a smart card. A universal reader can read any universal smart card – just like your EFTPOS reader.
The costs are high for individual cards. But it costs very little to load cash on to a smart card which of course you can spend anywhere in the world. The Smart Card does the currency exchange for you.
I can now withdraw cash from my NZ account from any machine in the US. That is the way it is heading. You mention bus/train/ferry. But taxis are public transport. I presume you pay them with a credit card. And your air fare. Once we all start waving our cards past tollbooths or have readable chips on the windscreen it will soon all fall into place.
July 30, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I certainly appreciate the convenience – it was nice to be able an ATM to get at my Kiwibank account in Canada a couple of weeks ago – but I dislike having my spending tracked. I prefer the anonymity of cash.
At least in NZ local organisations seem terrified of the Privacy Act, but in other jurisdictions, notably the US, protections are few and often ignored.
I suspect we will have to suffer widespread and severe abuses before we are moved to question the wisdom of allowing 3rd parties to know so much about us in return for convenience. (Naturally I hope it doesn’t come to that and wish to be wrong).
PS: Owen is right about the special function cards being of lesser use. I suspect that the Snapper proprietors would love it if it eventually became a universal platform. For now, it’s just another participant in the marketplace of payment mechanisms, but maybe one day… a little smart card can dream.
July 30, 2008 at 3:59 pm
You mention bus/train/ferry. But taxis are public transport. I presume you pay them with a credit card.
At least some of the taxis here already take Snapper, Owen. Almost all of them take eftpos. No need to fork out the cost of using your credit card, though they will take them too. Wellington is a thoroughly modern city you know.
July 30, 2008 at 5:13 pm
“You mention bus/train/ferry. But taxis are public transport. “
Most people woudln’t consider taxis public transport.
July 30, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Why are taxis not public transport?
There is a popularmisconception that public transport must be publicly owned. But it is only loss-making public transport that “needs” to be publicly owned or operated.
Planes are public transport and so are ferries.
The other group who claim taxis are not public transport are those who hate cars like the ARC and some greens. In many countries Jitneys are the key form of public transport. A taxi is just a small and more convenient bus. Shuttles are also public transport and the most rapidly growing sector in many markets. (Along with telecommuting which is a transport substitute which somewhat defies private/public definition.
Poneke,
I suppose I should have said “your plastic” rather than credit card.
Is snapper a “wave past” card or does it need physical contact with the reader?
The Smart cards I have been learning about in the US are smart wave past cards so you can use them at a toll booth or in a taxi and of course anywhere else that takes your fancy such as the Sultan’s Tent.
(You see I do know Wellington is a thoroughly modern city.)
[Poneke adds: Snapper was intended to be contactless, but the readers only seem to work if you press the card against the reader. Back in January, NZ Bus told me you wouldn't even have to take them out of your wallet or bag to use them, so clearly the technology in practice is not what was intended. I am sure it will improve.]
July 30, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Owen, These jitneys sound like a grand idea (and thank you for introducing me to a new word). In Turkey they have similar things called ‘dolmuses’ (after the Turkish word for ’stuffed’, so I believe). They are minivans that travel particular routes, though they seem to have the flexibility to make a few deviations. You flag them down, cram yourself in, and shout out when you want to get off. Apparently they are publicly-run. They are cheap and cosy. Wonder if they’d catch on here?
July 30, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Sounds like they’re all ’supposed’ to accept it by now, so…
Get on the bus & use your card. If it doesn’t work, refuse to pay cash or get off. If their obvious preferred method of payment is unreliable (it must be preferred else they wouldn’t have implemented it), that’s hardly the passengers fault. Who carries cash these days anyway?
Encourage everybody else to do the same.
If all of these snapper card holders refused to pay cash because of an unreliable system, surely they’d sort it out fairly smartly. Sighing and coughing up the cash costs you more and removes the urgency to correct the problem.
July 30, 2008 at 10:09 pm
The short range of smart cards is a security benefit, but not a guarantee that some surreptitious reading of the card cannot occur. Official RFID readers and writers may obey specifications, but dodgy ones won’t. Higher power, longer range and *poof*, your card has been read/written/cloned. I recall reading a real-world example of one of the USA’s new RFID passports being cloned without being opened.
Limited liability is going to be a major force in how they can be used. Regional airfare is on the top end of what Snapper can accommodate, which is probably a good thing. I wouldn’t want someone grabbing my card and buying an international flight on the wave of a wand. Who’d provide insurance on that?
July 31, 2008 at 7:52 am
According to yesterday’s Wellingtonian:
Ms McSweeney [GoWellington spokesperson] also says ,contrary to some media reports, “there has been no delay in introducing the ability to pay by Snapper…”
I’m sure everyone will be most comforted by this assurance!!
July 31, 2008 at 10:09 am
Owen – a technical reason that taxis aren’t public transport is that they don’t fall under the same legislative regime. Another reason is that the range of benefits that lead the government (local and central) to subsidise other public transport don’t apply to taxis.
In terms of the international transportability of these cards – my point wasn’t that it wasn’t feasible, just that its tough to make a business case for it. How big is the market of international travellers who use local public transport at their destination? Pretty small I’d imagine, certaintly not big enough to justify negotiating a profit sharing agreement with another authority/company etc.
July 31, 2008 at 11:42 am
@Colin:
Same problem here, I rang them, and this Anastasia person rang back, leaving a voicemail on my mobile saying that she’d have the card couriered out the next day. It arrived on time yesterday.
July 31, 2008 at 1:29 pm
While taxis may transport the public, when most people talk about public transport they are of course referring to mass transit, along fixed routes, at specified times.
Mr McShane is avidly against mass transit, and has much interesting “research” that shows it would be more efficient for each mass transit user to be given an SUV and a subsidised house in the exurbs.
Of course it’s a load of cobblers, but he argues his points consistently!
July 31, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Humm and if you go to have a look at his site, it seems his interest in smart cards is based around defrauding the government of tax.
July 31, 2008 at 11:38 pm
There are smart cards and there are smart cards. Many of the ones being made these days (and I suspect Snapper is one of them) have the ability to have multiple software applications at once running on them. What this means is that the same piece of plastic could be used on multiple public transport systems (so long as the hardware is compatible, which for contactless smartcards it mainly is from what I can gather). So one day we could use our Snapper cards in Hong Kong, London, or even, heaven forbid, Auckland.
I guess the question will be whether or not the Visa/Mastercard contactless efforts, which I think Owen is talking about above, beat out the possible eventual federation of the various global transportation cards. Maybe in Asia, at least. Or maybe they’ll join hands.
August 1, 2008 at 9:35 am
What strikes me as particularly odd about the Snapper card introduction (note that unlike Poneke all my buses seem to be Snapper enabled) is that it does not seem to be accurately calculating fares.
It’s been in my favour to date but I seem to be being charged different sums for the two stage ride into town ($1.88 ) and the reverse trip ($1.81). Also their authentication model (if you register your card on their website) is pretty light and they only support IE. Doesn’t seem all that well worked through yet.
[Poneke says: And last night, for a three-stage ride to town, I was charged $1, and for the fare home, zero! Really really strange. The fare home even showed up on my account as having been all the way out to Hungerford Rd when I was going in the opposite direction.]
August 1, 2008 at 10:36 am
Russell: agreed about their authentication, but given that they’re only protecting up to $300, and you can’t actually debit the card online, it’s probably good enough. Given that a huge proportion of the population can’t remember even simple passwords I imagine Snapper have weighed the costs of the odd security breach against the costs of a lots of “can’t get in!” calls to the help desk, and chosen accordingly.
I have registered a card online with Firefox and a throwaway email address. I have no intention of using their USB hardware.
August 1, 2008 at 11:10 am
uk-kiwi
You claim:
Mr McShane is avidly against mass transit, and has much interesting “research” that shows it would be more efficient for each mass transit user to be given an SUV and a subsidised house in the exurbs.
I have never made this claim. So you lose all credibility when you make such stupid comments.
Re internatonal travellers.
Actually, international travellers are major users of public transport if only because it is difficult to take your car on the plane.
The last trip I took to the US I found my trips were as follows: Most by virture of my friends’ private cars – especially in miles.
Next: Shuttles. eighteen trips.
Next: Taxis, about ten,
Next: Trains – 4 by Bart.
Next: Buses – none.
Shuttles are becoming more and more useful and popular. I suppose one virtue is that they are frequently free, courtesy of the hotel or shopping centre or whatever.
I often want to use buses but cannot because I am nervous about their destinations, and their ticketing and their costs,
So smart ticketing will encourage a lot more tourists to use buses. In Melbourne of course I use trams because they have good ticketing systems. Never use a bus.
I actually walk a lot more when overseas. I don’t have a car and its a great cure for jetlag. Especially in places like Paris.
August 1, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Russell: I have observed exactly the same charging on my two-zone trips: inbound = $1.81; outbound = $1.88. I’ve let them know. Hopefully it’s not a symptom of something wider. I’ve also noticed that sometimes the sum of the transactions doesn’t equal the total listed at the bottom of the transaction history (in my favour at the moment).
The authentication model is light: if I can guess your card number I can register it and see your transactions, assuming you haven’t registered already. From a selfish point of view I don’t mind, as I have already registered all of the snappers I have, some with throwaway addresses and others with real addresses, but it’s something to be aware of. As Stephen has noted though, there’s no way to debit the card online, so the risk to value is low.
August 2, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Yes, I too have noticed that their website does not always display accurate balances if you do the sums on the displayed transactions. Mind you, I have a suspicion that the balance is usually right, its just that not all the transactions are showing and/or showing accurately for some reason.
My issue with the authentication model was really about the ease with which I could register someone else’s card. At present all I could do is view the transactions but according to the FAQs on the Snapper website it seems that if I lose my Snapper (and assuming I have registered it), I will be able to cancel it and somehow transfer the balance to a new card. So what’s to stop me registering other cards (the card id looks serial), find one with a decent balance, cancel it and move it to another card that I have bought myself?
I’m sure that the technology would easily enough catch up with this practice eventually, but I imagine I could buy a fair few coffees, wishbone lunches etc. on my $300 card (registered with a throw away email address) before they cancel it.
FAQ extract below.
Will I lose my money if I lose my Snapper?
Losing your Snapper is like losing cash, so you need to look after it with the same care. Soon, if you have registered your Snapper online we can stop the card within 24 hours and put the balance onto your next Snapper. You will need to pay for your new Snapper though.
August 2, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Russell: good point. I guess this is why the balance transfer feature is “soon” rather than “now”. They’d have to remotely prove historical possession of the lost card. Tricky.
Perhaps this feature will only be available to people who have previously connected their Snapper card to their PC to create a secure linkage with the online account claiming ownership of that card. If this is the case, they’d better get a move-on on the non-Windows drivers for the cards.
Not that I hold much hope of this – the present drivers, like all the rest of the upper layers of the Snapper technology, appears Korean sourced. Korea is almost totally dominated by MS Windows, and there are no non-windows drivers for the PokoUSB card technology that both the USB Snappers and the feeders seem to be based on. Eyede, the local technology source for Snapper, would have to write their own MacOSX/Linux drivers… no doubt at some cost…
August 3, 2008 at 6:46 pm
NZ Bus told me you wouldn’t even have to take them out of your wallet or bag to use them
I’ve been able to successfully use my Snapper card while it’s been in my wallet (though just under the fabric) and also in an outer pocket of my bag (also very close to the fabric).
The trouble is, while Snapper is new, I’ve been getting funny looks when I waved my bag at the reader. So for the meantime, I’ve been flashing my red fish card around.
I’m still not happy with the card-using process. I think a plastic/leather/felt card wallet that I can chuck in my handbag might be the answer.
August 19, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Taxis will be the only viable form of public transport for many disabled people until all trains and buses are made properly accessible for everyone. The transport industry and politicians seem perfectly relaxed if that takes about another twenty or thirty years. In the meantime, some of your taxes are used to subsidise taxi fares for disabled travellers throughout the country.