Originally Posted by
kebosabi
I highly doubt riding the London Underground is that much of a hassle. You've been to London, right? You just fill up your Oyster Card, you tap in when you enter, and tap out when you exit. A lot of Americans visit London each year and no one is utterly confused about this system.
I wouldn't say "utterly confused", but it is more confusing than a flat-rate system. In New York, for example, you can plan the day's itinerary and say "I'm going to be riding the subway three times" and load $7.50 to your card. In London you would have to look at the zone map to determine where each trip starts and ends, then look at the chart to see how much each one will cost, and then add them up. That's a lot of extra steps, and most people (including myself) don't bother. They just load some arbitrary amount and refill as necessary. As a consequence, they don't know exactly how much they are spending each trip, and they may lose residual value at the end.
London, however, can get away with this because they are a transit-oriented city and the underground isn't exactly hurting for riders. If a city like LA, which is desperately trying to get people out of their cars, tried this, it would probably scare many people away, especially those who haven't been to Europe.
Originally Posted by
kebosabi
Interesting, do you know how exactly it works? As WhatWhatTech said, it would probably require each terminal to be online, since the machines can't write to the chip.
Originally Posted by
kebosabi
As an optimistic millennial, I hope that by this decade is out, we'll all have in our wallets, an EMV chipped, contactless capable, no FTF credit card, or NFC enabled smartphone that we can use to ride transit in any city in the world. No more "ok, I'm going to be in London next week, don't forget my Oyster Card...hmm, how much do I have in there? Wait after London, I'm going to Tokyo so I need my Suica too; how much is it in there again...?" Here's hoping to that future!
That would be great. First world problem for the few of us who have the luxury of visiting London and Tokyo in one trip, but hey, why not
