by frog
It is inevitable that there will be teething problems when a new technology is rolled out and the Snapper Card, Wellington’s new fare system, is no exception. Open warfare broke out on my bus this morning, as Snapper cardholders were turned away because the bus was not fitted with a Snapper reader. It seems that Valley Flyer operates several of the extra commuter time services through my neighbourhood and according to the driver it may be up to a year before all Valley Flyer buses get the technology.
The half dozen Snapper patrons revolted and stormed the bus, refusing to pay cash or leave the bus. Murmurs of support came from throughout the bus as people realised what the fuss was all about.
This was an unfortunate situation for both the driver and the patrons. The patrons have been sold their cards as “better than cash” and the adverts all say that no-one needs to carry money any more. How convenient. Not.
I don’t care that the fine print says that Snapper may not be available on all buses at all times. That’s not what the marketers are selling. If the roll out is going to have the odd teething problem, the driver should be empowered to let Snapper holders on the bus as if they were Gold Card holders, noting the number of patrons and either charging Snapper for a failure to deliver or wearing the cost themselves if the problem is the bus company’s.
To ask the driver to bear the wrath of angry Snapper patrons, when there really isn’t any problem or failure, is just nonsense. It also erodes trust in a new technology that could have great benefits for everyone.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare by frog on Wed, August 20th, 2008
Tags: bus, fare, snapper, valley flyer, war, wellington
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Poneke’s done some work on this, and these are pretty clearly covered by the Consumer Guarantees Act.
If they can’t deliver the service advertised, they are required to offer your money back, or (if acceptable to you) a service of similar value. Which in concrete terms means that the people storming the bus were well within their rights.
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Thanks George. It’s over here.
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This is fantastic: a bus passenger revolt. Any photographs ?
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Apparently some bus drivers aren’t too happy with the use of the cards either – one driver explained to me that there are such things as ‘cold fish’ – that is, people who get on and off the bus using their snappers without acknowloging the bus driver at all. I know there are some bus drivers in Wellington that would get fail marks in the ‘pleasant and friendly’ exam, but I think it is a shame when a piece of technology lets people think they are resolved from showing common courtesies.
So, if you have a snapper card, remember you can still say hello, or give a friendly smile, or say thank you on your way out.
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Meghan: bus drivers get paid for their work don’t they ? They should be grateful they haven’t been replaced by robots (yet).
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Hang on george, despite their experience Consumer NZ are not the arbiters of the law. Poneke got what appears to be an unofficial view from them, but we don’t know the full detail of what he asked and what they said. Of course snapper will be covered by the law in some way but not necessarily in the way poneke suggested – only the courts can decide that.
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>>>bus drivers get paid for their work don’t they ? They should be grateful they haven’t been replaced by robots (yet).
As should we all, Bryan.
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# Bryan Spondre Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Meghan: bus drivers get paid for their work don’t they ? They should be grateful they haven’t been replaced by robots (yet).
……..
Tch,tch,tch! Let them eat cake!
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Oh I can’t resist a slashdot comment on this one.
I for one welcome our cake eating bus driver overlords.
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In my pocket I have a “Stagecoach Auckland Go Rider ” card that I regularly use to curry favour with the “cake eating bus driver overlords”. It has never malfunctioned: why can’t Wellington get it together like Auckland has ?
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Even Timaru has a smartcard system that works (albeit just because it’s copy-pasted from Chch).
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Meghan Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 11:38 am
> – one driver explained to me that there are such things as ‘cold fish’ – that is, people who get on and off the bus using their snappers without acknowloging the bus driver at all.
There are also ‘cold fish’ drivers who don’t acknowledge passengers. When I used a Gold Pass, I always found there were some bus drivers who couldn’t be bothered acknowledging that they had seen my gold pass and confirmed it was valid for the current month. This means you have to either walk off and sit down, in which case a driver who hasn’t had a change to check it will yell out ‘hey, get back here young lady, I haven’t had a chance to check your card yet’, or wait until you’re sure the driver has checked it, in which case he will probably say something like ‘move it you idiot, I haven’t got all day’.
There are two options, either all the passengers could start being polite to the drivers and hope the drivers take the hint, or all the drivers could be polite to passengers and hope the remaining passengers take the hint.
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# miro Says:
August 20th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
> Even Timaru has a smartcard system that works (albeit just because it’s copy-pasted from Chch).
Even Timaru?
Timaru also has New Zealand’s first municipal composting system, and the most elegant urban paving and lights I’ve seen anywhere. They also developed waterfront areas for recreation decades before any other NZ city (with the possible exception of Napier). I suspect that having a small and reasonably stable population means the council has got time to get things like that sorted out.
Of course the bus cards are a different matter – they have the same bus cards as Christchurch because they have the same regional council.
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Even the manawatu have several that function, and very well too. Particuarly the student population who mearly use their ID cards for free transit and the elderly who have a system much the same. Vastly increases the rate at which busses can function, just put the card on the scanner, quick hello or thankyou and your on, no waiting around for people to fumble with coins and such.
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Bryan Spondre said: In my pocket I have a “Stagecoach Auckland Go Rider ?
Good to hear that Bryan! From your previous posts I had assumed you were one who drove the Merc around town. Pleased to see I was wrong.
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So, it’s like an EFTPOS card, but without the security of a PIN?
What genius came up with that? I would hope there are discounts for using it….surely….
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‘Tis true, like electronic cash. The bus discount is 25%, which is better than the 10 trip ticket at 20% off. Of course, the fares go up on 1 Sep…
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I get paid to do my job as well, but I enjoy courtesy from my clients. It makes me feel I am actually appreciated. I am sure the bus drivers feel the same, and it doesn’t cost me anything to be friendly.
In fact I have found Wellington passengers to be quite courteous as far as thanking the bus drivers go.
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I usually catch a snapper for the pan when I go fishing.
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Me too d4j, and one of my favotite spots is the mouth of the Kaukapakapa river on Kaipara Harbour.
But now Genesis Energy are planning to stuff that up too.
Um, back on thread (public transport) now thanks!
But feel free to keep the discussion re fishing/thermal power going on the thread from my link above.
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“why can’t Wellington get it together like Auckland has ?”
Bryan, do you really think Auckland has got it together? Alright, you got about half a million ticketing options to choose from, and if you pick the wrong one, you cannot go to certain areas.
For instance, your Auckland Go Rider is useless if you want to go to Howick – NZ Bus don’t go there. Likewise, if you want to go to parts of West Auckland. Or if you want to take an ultra fast ride on the 5:25 Express Train to Papakura. My piece of cardboard that expired today is useless if I want to use a bus, unless it is an NZ Bus bus in the City Zone.
At least Wellington are trying to get an integrated ticket; only part of Auckland that has it is Green Bay and the North Shore.
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I have watched the launch of Snapper with interest and I am intrigued by the lack of foresight. Snapper is not a Bus Card, if I am not mistaken it is being touted as an Electronic Purse. But this rather backward system is going to force me to have YET ANOTHER piece of PLASTIC junk in my wallet. Why couldn’t the banks get together and create a single electronic purse system for my EFTPOS card that I could use at parking meters, on the buses, at the diary, etc. Seems to work well in other parts of the world, why do we always re-invent a square wheel?
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kahikatea, Timaru’s most elegant urban paving and lights are the result of part of the deal done with Transit to remove the SH1 designation from Stafford St when Transit finally completed it’s part of the 1962 Timaru Master Transport Plan in the early ’90s. Apparently the cost of the 1km link to Theodosia St was more than Transit’s predeccessor could afford to spend. The Port Loop Rd took a lot of the heavy traffic out of the main shopping precinct but you can image how delightful it must have been for shoppers with stock trucks rumbling past every few minutes in summer.
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Alert:
Opinion: Remove the tax incentives for housing investors
http://www.interest.co.nz/ratesblog/index.php/2008/08/21/opinion-remove-the-tax-incentives-for-housing-investors/#comments
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jh, while your post is hugely off topic, I need to say one thing. What would you do to all the poor people that would be effected. Removing the tax incentives will see rents increase, and guess who are the majority renters:
Poor people!
You need to take a more balanced approach; you are going to have to slowly deflate housing prices by opening up more land on Auckland’s hinterland, see prices drop, and then remove the tax incentives as it wouldn’t hurt people by then.
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but if you decrease tax incentives the marginal costs of a property increase relative to the marginal utility which results in less profitability for a given peice of land under a given usage since the tenants will only we willing to pay so much for any given property, the result being less demand for housing by real estate investors and as a result falling prices. falling prices results in less bulk in mortgages for new entrants which means less money need go to mortgage repayments and thus less money is needed to be extracted to maintain the investment, so over-all the net rent value should increase only minimally and land should be put to more profitable uses. The addition of a land tax would further the effect, except since it is levied on all properties and land is limited the effect for lower prices will be somewhat more substantial across the board. both of course could be introduced progesivly to minimise the immediate impact on market factors.
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The snapper concept, as I understand it, is to put a single piece of plastic, with an amount of money “on” it that you take out with you. It is no more secure than cash, but you do have the convenience of not putting coin holes in pockets.
As a parent of older kids (our youngest is in his 5th year of Uni) I can see some great benefits in this approach to electronic cash that others might not have thought of. For instance, the student friday night blow out. You must have heard of it – a student has $200 ‘spending’ money a month and goes out, gets drunk, forgets what’s happening and spends the lot in a single night using a debit or credit card! Students are not alone in this though – there are many young workers who do the same and live on bread and beans for the rest of the pay-period! I love the idea of them being cut off when they’ve spent their ‘budget’ for the evening out, it at least offers an opportunity for some sensible planning. Those centuries ago when I was a student we managed by only taking with us the cash we could afford – this give a way to do that again.
I use my snapper card for coffee and snacks at the local cafe (two of us share a car ride and that’s still much cheaper than two return bus trips). Soon I hope to use it for many more things – just as a few million do in London, where a day without the Oyster Card (I think that’s what it is called) is a disaster for most!
IN the mean time teething troubles happen with most new wide-distribution things. Ask the guy whose job it was to walk in front of his bosses car with a red flag how many times the bumper clipped him behind the knee!
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The Oyster Card was great in London because you got discounts, and you could use it seamlessly across most services. Perhaps Snapper will get there, but if it offers neither of these benefits, then I don’t see the point.
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…and the bigest advantage was that you didn’t have to deal with London Underground staff. Or wait in queues in order to do so.
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“The Oyster Card was great in London because you got discounts, ”
To be fair, that was not true in the Oyster’s early days. We are comparing a mature system to a new one.
These days the Oyster is great. It also is intelligent: it switches you over to the equivalent of a “Day Tripper” after a few trips if that’s the cheapest way for you to travel. If the Snapper did that I’d buy one.
But on the topic of the Oyster:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2458123/Oyster-card-failure-gives-London-commuters-free-travel.html
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Umm, BP, when you have previously asked a question, and someone has gone to the trouble of answering it, (Valis: “The bus discount is 25%) then you could try to pay attention
The seamlessness was the point of the original post though – I don’t suppose anyone knows why it can’t be used on the trains?
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It can’t be used on the trains because it is a bus company initiative (Not one by the regional council)
Regional councils in Auckland and Wellington have been umming and arring about integrated ticketing for at least the past 10 years and have come up with zilch, I though it was fairly brave of GoWellington to roll this out on their own.
At least they have gotten rail partially included with them as a merchant so you can buy your 10 trip or monthly pass with snapper fund ( yes I know it is poor substitute, but hey it is a start).
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# BluePeter Says:
August 21st, 2008 at 9:34 am
> The Oyster Card was great in London because you got discounts,
So London has an Oyster card. Wellington has a Snapper card, and China has an Octopus card. Any idea why they’re all named after marine creatures?
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Perhaps they see us as reef fish?
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Wikipedia sez:
“The Cantonese name for the Octopus card, Baat Daaht Tùng (traditional Chinese: 八?通), literally means “eight-arrived pass” (Baat Daaht also means reaching everywhere). It was selected by the head of the MTR Corporation, the parent company of Octopus Cards Limited, in a naming competition held in 1996.[15] The number eight is a significant number in Chinese in that it is often used to indicate “many”. For instance, the proverb sei tùng baat daaht (traditional Chinese: 四通八?) is a common expression loosely translated as “reachable in all directions”.[16] It is also considered a lucky number in Chinese culture, and the phrase baat daaht can possibly be associated with the similar-sounding faat daaht which means “getting rich” (traditional Chinese: 發?) in the local dialect.”
“Oyster was chosen as a fresh approach that was not directly linked to transport, ticketing or London. According to Andrew McCrum, now of Appella brand name consultants, who was brought in to find a name by Saatchi and Saatchi Design (in turn contracted by TranSys), Oyster was conceived and subsequently promoted because of the metaphorical implications of security and value in the component meanings of the hard bivalve shell and the concealed pearl. Its associations with London through Thames estuary oyster beds and the popular idiom ‘the world is your oyster’ were also significant factors in its selection as was the uniqueness of the word Oyster.”
I’m not sure if that helps…
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>
>>it is a bus company initiative
Sorry my friend, it’s much more private enterprise than that! It is an initiative of EFTPOS, which is owned by the ANZNational Bank.
I expect we’ll soon see Cullen’s Train Set accepting the card.
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# miro Says:
August 21st, 2008 at 3:34 pm
> Wikipedia sez:
> “The Cantonese name for the Octopus card, …
> “Oyster was chosen as a fresh approach that was not directly linked to transport, ticketing or London…
> I’m not sure if that helps…
No, but it’s interesting nonetheless
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