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Penalty Fare when machine not working

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Llanigraham

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If that really is the case (and I'd like to hope it isn't), that's wholly unacceptable.

How do you expect it to work?
Are you expecting EVERY ticket machine at EVERY equipped station to be connected permanently to a central system?
Do you have any idea how difficult and expensive that would be?
 
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ForTheLoveOf

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I don't work in the rail industry, but I've worked in IT and telecoms for quite a while and this a perfectly normal way to set things up. You don't waste bandwidth costs on always-on connections for devices that are only going to require intermittent connectivity (think a TVM at a station that gets 4 trains an hour). And alerting on one failed check-in is a recipe for wasted callouts.
There may be legitimate technical reasons behind it, but ultimately it's not good enough issuing Penalty Fares or indeed punishing passengers in any other way (requiring payment of the undiscounted Anytime (Day) Single, taking details) if the systems for knowing what ticketing facilities are available and running doesn't give the relevant member of staff fully up to date and correct information.
 

WelshBluebird

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I don't work in the rail industry, but I've worked in IT and telecoms for quite a while and this a perfectly normal way to set things up. You don't waste bandwidth costs on always-on connections for devices that are only going to require intermittent connectivity (think a TVM at a station that gets 4 trains an hour). And alerting on one failed check-in is a recipe for wasted callouts.

Surely in this day and age there is no excuse for that? You say bandwidth costs, but if we are talking a simple handshake to verify if the TVM is on or not, you are talking next to nothing!

If my mobile phone can be always online, a TVM can be. Hell, even the passenger information boards at railway stations, and the equivalent at bus stops are closer to being always online if the claim you made earlier in this thread is true!
 

Realfish

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Nothing wrong with this attitude.

Except for the fact that, buried deep down on this site, you'll find examples of passengers approaching guards by knocking on their door, only to get a flea in their ear for distracting or disturbing them.
 

nuts & bolts

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Except for the fact that, buried deep down on this site, you'll find examples of passengers approaching guards by knocking on their door, only to get a flea in their ear for distracting or disturbing them.

Sounds like it was along time ago if it is buried deep:)
 

sheff1

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I was waiting at Brockholes station not long after the TVM was installed. In the 15 minutes or so I was there the TVM cycled out and into service 4 or 5 times. It was probably OOS for half the time I was there and, presumably, had been doing the same before I arrived and would continue after I left. From what has been said upthread, I assume no one in the TOC would be aware of the issue.
 

najaB

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If my mobile phone can be always online, a TVM can be.
It's not the actual bandwidth, keeping hundreds of open connections that aren't actually doing anything is computationally inefficient. It makes your system much less robust overall. It's much simpler and easier to have the device call in when it needs to, and send a heartbeat every now and then. Your phone actually does the same, just at a higher frequency because it has to be able to accept incoming calls - which a TVM doesn't.
 

rs101

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How do you expect it to work?
Are you expecting EVERY ticket machine at EVERY equipped station to be connected permanently to a central system?
Do you have any idea how difficult and expensive that would be?

Yep. We have several thousand remote devices scattered across North America and Europe.
We get near real-time updates from them and know of any downtimes within about 4 minutes.

These devices are in far less hospitable environments too - from rail terminals and warehouses to docks..
 

najaB

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I was waiting at Brockholes station not long after the TVM was installed. In the 15 minutes or so I was there the TVM cycled out and into service 4 or 5 times. It was probably OOS for half the time I was there and, presumably, had been doing the same before I arrived and would continue after I left. From what has been said upthread, I assume no one in the TOC would be aware of the issue.
Depends. I would expect that it would check in immediately on booting - if so, the repeated handshakes would be noted.
 

ForTheLoveOf

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How do you expect it to work?
Are you expecting EVERY ticket machine at EVERY equipped station to be connected permanently to a central system?
Do you have any idea how difficult and expensive that would be?
It's clearly doable. If it's too expensive then the railway will simply have to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who says the ticket machines weren't working. What else do you propose - that it's acceptable for people to be issued with Penalty Fares, to have their personal details taken, or to be sold a more expensive ticket, all because the railway is too skint to treat its customers with respect (and in line with their own rules)?!

In any case, in the grand scale of all the expenses of running the railway, this is a very small cost and one that, one would hope, would increase revenue collection more than it costs!
 

najaB

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It's clearly doable.
Everything is doable, the question is if it's worth doing. Given that it's comparatively rare for machines to be out of order and RPIs to not know, I'm going to say that it isn't.

Certainly it will cost a lot more than dealing with the occasional penalty fare appeal.
 

MikeWh

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How is the "authorised collector" supposed to know if there is going to be a successful appeal?
And under exactly what legislation are the TOC going to be sued for unlawful use of personal data? There is nothing in GDPR that stops this in this sort of situation.
If you'd bothered to read the post @ForTheLoveOf was replying to then you'd see that it was being suggested that an RPI might issue a PF knowing that it could be successfully appealed, just so they appeared consistent to other pax with different issues.
 

35B

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Everything is doable, the question is if it's worth doing. Given that it's comparatively rare for machines to be out of order and RPIs to not know, I'm going to say that it isn't.

Certainly it will cost a lot more than dealing with the occasional penalty fare appeal.
But the cost is not the whole of it, is it? What about having a quality of monitoring that actually meets a realistic standard and is designed around the customer, not the supplier.
 

najaB

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What about having a quality of monitoring that actually meets a realistic standard and is designed around the customer, not the supplier
I agree. If both the rate and cost of failure is low, then realistically you don't need realtime monitoring. If either is high, then realistically you do.

The actual cost to both the customer and the TOC of a machine being out of order is (or at least should be) near-zero.
 

gingerheid

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How do you expect it to work?
Are you expecting EVERY ticket machine at EVERY equipped station to be connected permanently to a central system?
Do you have any idea how difficult and expensive that would be?

Not very! Maybe a few years ago, but not now!
 

rs101

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What are the devices doing?

It varies. Some are connected to load cells or radar in silos (to measure current product levels), some to RF tag readers by the side of railway tracks. Some are even on rail wagons, monitoring temperature, humidity, vibration, door status, etc.
Most have keepalive checks, where they transmit a status update to our servers every few minutes - this can include anything from timestamp of last event, through battery levels,etc. So not that much different from the sort of keepalive/status message a ticket machine could send.
 

Kite159

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And how many times do you think authorised collectors/RPIs hear "the machine wasn't working" as an excuse when they catch out a member of the Pay when Challenged brigade?

Even real time monitoring won't pick up if some local kid has decided to put used chewing gum in the card slot
 

etr221

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Even real time monitoring won't pick up if some local kid has decided to put used chewing gum in the card slot
My expectation (or at least hope) would be that the monitoring/logging system would include noting all activities on and by the TVM - including both successful and unsuccessful ticket issues - with some sort of instant analysis to flag up unlikely, fault indicating, values.
And that remote monitoring would (if the TVM isn't checking in frequently) include the ability to challenge the TVM: "Are you there/ok? Are you issuing tickets?"
 

Wallsendmag

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What sort of inspection regime and logging facilities do TVMs have?
I would expect them to be checked reasonably frequently - every few days, if not daily - and that any ticket issue, or other transaction, would be logged. Also if there is any report of one not working (whoever to) then it should be swiftly investigated - including examination of log to determine when it last was working - and either fixed straight away, or flagged as non-working (with that information available to RPIs and the like) - so that it should be unusual for an RPI to be faced with just one passenger's word that it was out of service (by the time the question comes up again, it will already have been reported).
And that in the event of any sort of appeal or prosecution, the inspection and ticket issue logs should be there as part of the evidence.
I can see the status and transactions for each of our 164 TVMs, with all our stations being staffed the non working machine isn’t such a problem for us though.
 
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rs101

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Everything is doable, the question is if it's worth doing. Given that it's comparatively rare for machines to be out of order and RPIs to not know, I'm going to say that it isn't.

Certainly it will cost a lot more than dealing with the occasional penalty fare appeal.
My expectation (or at least hope) would be that the monitoring/logging system would include noting all activities on and by the TVM - including both successful and unsuccessful ticket issues - with some sort of instant analysis to flag up unlikely, fault indicating, values.
And that remote monitoring would (if the TVM isn't checking in frequently) include the ability to challenge the TVM: "Are you there/ok? Are you issuing tickets?"

Yep - simple status reporting with timestamps for "last reboot", "last ticket issued", "last aborted transaction", etc.

All straightforward enough and nothing not being done in other industries already
 

Silverdale

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The situation on the Robin Hood line is that the TVMs at many of the stations are regularly OOU and for a prolonged period. The one at Hucknall has been continuously unusable for at least the last 8 weeks. I'm sure that EMT are aware, so the problem isn't due to a lack of realtime monitoring, but just because RPIs are aware that they shouln't be issuing PFs, it doesn't mean there's no cost to either the TOC or customer.

Given the frequency of stops and with a full/standing train at busy times, the guard will have his work cut out to sell tickets to all those who have been unable to purchase beforehand. This either costs the customers (in time spent) purchasing a ticket (e.g. at Nottingham) or it costs the TOC (in lost revenue) There is also the inconvenience to customers of not being able to collect tickets bought online from a non-working TVM.

If TOCs are pro-active enough to rectify the faulty TVMs they are aware of in a timely manner, there might well be an argument for having realtime monitoring. Until that's the case, there's not much point.
 

Wallsendmag

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Yep - simple status reporting with timestamps for "last reboot", "last ticket issued", "last aborted transaction", etc.

All straightforward enough and nothing not being done in other industries already
We have all that and more plus the ability to remotely reboot or view transactions taking place.
 
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