Project Oval: TfL win DfT contract to expand contactless system to 233 rail stations by May 2024, Railcards coming to contactless payment cards

[Harryeurostar]

For railcard discounts and child discounts etc, wouldn't it make more sense to have contactless bank cards for full fare, adult payment but couldn't TfL introduce their own branded version of keygo that would work at these new readers that commuters could add onto their existing operators smartcards? That way railcards can be added like keygo and children can also already sign up for a kids smartcard with their photo on the back so not much would have to be changed there. This would mean that TfL wouldn't have to introduce a new kind of dummy card like some people have said as ideas and they can partly use existing technology that the public is used to. Just an idea

 

[Benjwri]

For railcard discounts and child discounts etc, wouldn't it make more sense to have contactless bank cards for full fare, adult payment but couldn't TfL introduce their own branded version of keygo that would work at these new readers that commuters could add onto their existing operators smartcards? That way railcards can be added like keygo and children can also already sign up for a kids smartcard with their photo on the back so not much would have to be changed there. This would mean that TfL wouldn't have to introduce a new kind of dummy card like some people have said as ideas and they can partly use existing technology that the public is used to. Just an idea

It's an ambition to allow linking of a railcard to a contactless card in Phase 2 of Project Oval anyways. Introducing an ITSO card for PAYG across TfL would be a huge amount of effort, because a whole new back office system would be needed to store bank account information, record ITSO touches etc. The current schemes such as KeyGo are incompatible with the Tube network. Creating such a system would be more work than enabling a solution for discounts on contactless, and would take longer.

 

[Harryeurostar]

Ah ok that makes sense

 

[matt_world2004]

It's an ambition to allow linking of a railcard to a contactless card in Phase 2 of Project Oval anyways. Introducing an ITSO card for PAYG across TfL would be a huge amount of effort, because a whole new back office system would be needed to store bank account information, record ITSO touches etc. The current schemes such as KeyGo are incompatible with the Tube network. Creating such a system would be more work than enabling a solution for discounts on contactless, and would take longer.

I thought the plan for railcards across contactless to develop a pay as you go card that processes in the same way as contactless transactions which would allow railcard discounts to be added to it

 

[Roast Veg]

I thought the plan for railcards across contactless to develop a pay as you go card that processes in the same way as contactless transactions which would allow railcard discounts to be added to it

That seems a lot more complicated than associating railcars to TfL accounts, and simply charging based on that.

 

[jfollows]

For railcard discounts and child discounts etc, wouldn't it make more sense to have contactless bank cards for full fare, adult payment but couldn't TfL introduce their own branded version of keygo that would work at these new readers that commuters could add onto their existing operators smartcards? That way railcards can be added like keygo and children can also already sign up for a kids smartcard with their photo on the back so not much would have to be changed there. This would mean that TfL wouldn't have to introduce a new kind of dummy card like some people have said as ideas and they can partly use existing technology that the public is used to. Just an idea

I have a senior railcard, but as an infrequent visitor to London I'm not interested in getting an Oyster card, but contactless allows me to use my normal credit card and is ideal for me except that I can't get a railcard discount. I certainly wouldn't consider any other kind of smartcard either - my requirements are either a Travelcard on the day or, almost exclusively nowadays, contactless.
If/when I'm able to add a railcard discount to my registered TFl account then I'll do it. Until then, I'll live without the discount. This is something that has been promised for years and I'm glad to see that - belatedly - it seems to be happening.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I think phase 1 includes Windsor branch and stations to Shepperton. So clearly on a line basis as geographically stations like Esher are lot nearer London.

That may make some sense from the point of view that these are (possibly) quieter branches where the contactless extension covers the entire route of the services along those branches, rather than being in an ongoing situation where contactless is valid up to a certain station, but not beyond, on the same train. You can therefore expect fewer issues with passengers getting confused about where they can use contactless, which may make these lines good for an initial rollout and checking for any problems.

It also means that if any issues turn up that delay the later phases, you've already done the complete branches where Project Oval makes the most sense.

 

[MikeWh]

Although Windsor means extending the Reading line from Feltham to Staines, so there might still be some confusion.

 

[matt_world2004]

That seems a lot more complicated than associating railcars to TfL accounts, and simply charging based on that.

It's more complicated linking railcards to cobtactless cards as it requires every revenue inspection device to have a list of contactless cards with railcards attached. Also you cannot confiscate contactless cards for misuse

 

[PeterC]

It's more complicated linking railcards to cobtactless cards as it requires every revenue inspection device to have a list of contactless cards with railcards attached. Also you cannot confiscate contactless cards for misuse

The Railcard would have to be linked a specific payment card rather than the account as a whole AND the names on the cards would have to match. Any other payment cards linked to the account would be charged at full rate.

Currently I don't think that there is any check that a contactless card linked to an account actually belongs to the account holder.

It would be a major redesign

 

[DynamicSpirit]

It's more complicated linking railcards to cobtactless cards as it requires every revenue inspection device to have a list of contactless cards with railcards attached. Also you cannot confiscate contactless cards for misuse

Isn't there a mechanism to block contactless cards that have been used for fare evasion etc. so those cards won't work any barriers? I thought TfL were able to do that? (Obviously not so useful on barrier-less stations though)

 

[matt_world2004]

Isn't there a mechanism to block contactless cards that have been used for fare evasion etc. so those cards won't work any barriers? I thought TfL were able to do that? (Obviously not so useful on barrier-less stations though)

Yes but the handheld revenue inspection devices cannot currently do this and this would have to work underground where there is often no signal or patchy unreliable signal

Also imagine if you recently got a railcard added to your contactless card. A revenue inspection device has not updated its list of railcards contactless cards since the update. You then get your contactless card blocked because the revenue inspection device had outdated information

TfL is currently having problems identifying if apple pay /Google pay has been touched in on buses railcards add a whole new degree of complexity. Creating a new "Oyster" card which uses the contactless backend would be easier and would also allow concession passes like freedom passes to be extended to Reading. They are already making oyster gateline permits that can open the barriers west of west Drayton

It did say in one of tfls pitches for project oval something like this "Creating a new card based on tfls cpay technology. To allow concessions and railcard users to benefit from contactless fares"

I would imagine that such a card will not be branded oyster to avoid confusing the public.

 

[Jam381]

Are there any plans for an upgrade to Oyster at some point so that it can be used in all the places contactless can?

 

[CyrusWuff]

Are there any plans for an upgrade to Oyster at some point so that it can be used in all the places contactless can?

No. Oyster can only handle 15 "zones", and they've all been used, so any further Pay As You Go extensions are Contactless or ITSO (Smartcard) only unless they piggyback on one of the existing zones.

 

[Starmill]

Yes but the handheld revenue inspection devices cannot currently do this and this would have to work underground where there is often no signal or patchy unreliable signal

Also imagine if you recently got a railcard added to your contactless card. A revenue inspection device has not updated its list of railcards contactless cards since the update. You then get your contactless card blocked because the revenue inspection device had outdated information

TfL is currently having problems identifying if apple pay /Google pay has been touched in on buses railcards add a whole new degree of complexity. Creating a new "Oyster" card which uses the contactless backend would be easier and would also allow concession passes like freedom passes to be extended to Reading. They are already making oyster gateline permits that can open the barriers west of west Drayton

It did say in one of tfls pitches for project oval something like this "Creating a new card based on tfls cpay technology. To allow concessions and railcard users to benefit from contactless fares"

I would imagine that such a card will not be branded oyster to avoid confusing the public.

To be fair these are only problems if you make them problems.

There's absolutely no need to verify the railcard offline. Just verify railcards at gates which are online. Same for buses, simply don't verify them on the bus if your technology isn't up to the job. It isn't done on the other modes anyway. The additional fraud risk is insignificant.

 

[matt_world2004]

To be fair these are only problems if you make them problems.

There's absolutely no need to verify the railcard offline. Just verify railcards at gates which are online. Same for buses, simply don't verify them on the bus if your technology isn't up to the job. It isn't done on the other modes anyway. The additional fraud risk is insignificant.

Is it really insignificant given the amount of people who have expired railcards or no railcards at all and then claim a discounted ticket. In disputes and prosecutions

 

[JonathanH]

Just verify railcards at gates which are online.

How? By manual review of railcards or a double touch? Neither sounds practical. Other approaches, in particular facial recognition could be the stuff of speculative threads, but highly impractical.

Is it really insignificant given the amount of people who have expired railcards or no railcards at all and then claim a discounted ticket. In disputes and prosecutions

Any concession has the potential to be abused.

 

[Starmill]

How? By manual review of railcards or a double touch? Neither sounds practical. Other approaches, in particular facial recognition could be the stuff of speculative threads, but highly impractical.

Same way railcards are verified on Oyster at gates. When someone touches in, the gate flags the user card for manual railcard inspection.

Is it really insignificant given the amount of people who have expired railcards or no railcards at all and then claim a discounted ticket. In disputes and prosecutions

If they're concerned they can run more onboard ticket inspection or hold more revenue blocks. Not particularly difficult. See how Greater Anglia and c2c do it on their London and outer suburban network, compared to laggards like Southeastern Metro who so rarely do either gates or onboard.

 

[JamesT]

Any concession has the potential to be abused.

The question is whether the abuse of the concession outweighs the cost of enforcement, or even increased revenue from people using the service who otherwise wouldn't.

 

[CeeJ]

Also imagine if you recently got a railcard added to your contactless card. A revenue inspection device has not updated its list of railcards contactless cards since the update. You then get your contactless card blocked because the revenue inspection device had outdated information

I don't think this would be an issue. The actual payment is settled back-of-house, including when being challenged by revenue enforcement, which would account for the railcard. Revenue inspection devices would only the list of railcard users so they can challenge someone to show their railcard. Railcard expiry can be built-in to avoid this situation.

It did say in one of tfls pitches for project oval something like this "Creating a new card based on tfls cpay technology. To allow concessions and railcard users to benefit from contactless fares"

I don't mind if they create an Oyster 2.0 based on credit/debit card tech, so long as you can add it to Apple/Google Pay.

the gate flags the user card for manual railcard inspection

Does it? I've never been challenged at a dateline.

 

[crablab]

TfL gatelines aren't always 'online' in the peak, AIUI, instead caching touches locally to send in batches. The latency would be far too great otherwise. So there is already a certain amount of offline and batch processing of touches.

Since the Railcard would be associated with the card in the TfL backend (for charging the correct fare at the end of the day) TfL will already know which cards have a Railcard associated with them. So from that perspective it doesn't really matter that the gateline/RID don't know that a card has a Railcard attached.

Offline verification of a card TfL don't control without maintaining an offline lookup table is challenging. It is the simplest solution and already exists for TfLs list of "bad" cards.

The EMV spec does allow for arbitrary data to be written to the general storage of a chip, I believe. Unfortunately this is usually disabled and the storage used for other things (eg. transaction history).

Another alternative would be to write a separate EMV application to the chip to sign as a 'Railcard', but that would need to be done at perso so that's never going to happen.

Realistically, it'll be a lookup table you try to keep in sync, accepting the risk that someone has registered their card with a Railcard and touched in between the last time the table was synced to your device. And then accepting revenue risk that they didn't have a valid Railcard and thus evaded a fare.

Plus, Project Oval is mainly concerned with above ground suburban areas.

Seems a fairly remote risk...

Does it? I've never been challenged at a dateline

It can be configured to reject certain discounted tickets (eg. Railcards, Freedom Pass), or highlight them with a light to be seen by an RPI.

This is common at Paddington EL (rejecting Railcard tickets) and frustratingly no-one is ever interested in seeing the actual Railcard......

 

[Gaelan]

Creating a new "Oyster" card which uses the contactless backend

As a point of comparison, Seattle’s currently in the middle of an upgrade to our “Orca” smartcards (which I believe are also Cubic-made), which - as far as I can tell from the outside - entails getting rid of all on-card balance tracking, instead just reading the ID off the cards and settling it all at the back of house later. It’s being done backwards compatibly, so old cards still work fine - the only change (beyond a new design) is the addition of a barcode so supermarkets can top cards up without a dedicated Orca reader. I’m not sure whether the cards can still track whether they’ve been tapped in (or tapped recently for busses) - revenue inspections are rare enough that I’ve never seen one, though I’m not a particularly heavy transit user back home.

It seems like London could do something fairly similar - keep the physical Oyster cards, but treat them for all intents and purposes exactly like a contactless card. If they wanted to, they could still track whether the card was tapped in (eg by treating everything as zone 1 as far as the card is considered), which would be sufficient for all but the cleverest fare evasion, and even that could probably be detected in the back office (and the card blocked) if ticket-inspection taps are logged.

As for railcards on contactless, it seems worth considering that you don’t need 100% reliability - ticket inspectors (at least outside London) only ask for railcards like half the time anyway, but as long as it’s flagged up fairly often it’s reasonably unlikely anyone will try to chance it.

 

[Starmill]

Does it? I've never been challenged at a dateline.

Yes it's very common at London Underground gates. Also possible at other TfL managed gates.

 

[matt_world2004]

Same way railcards are verified on Oyster at gates. When someone touches in, the gate flags the user card for manual railcard inspection.


If they're concerned they can run more onboard ticket inspection or hold more revenue blocks. Not particularly difficult. See how Greater Anglia and c2c do it on their London and outer suburban network, compared to laggards like Southeastern Metro who so rarely do either gates or ononboard.

So how would this work in real time with railcards attached to contactless cards? It would have to check a central database download the information and do that in the milliseconds tfl specifies for the gateline to open

 

[crablab]

So how would this work in real time with railcards attached to contactless cards?

Read my post above. The gateline could maintain a lookup table
I doubt opening a gate would contingent on verifying the Railcard status (as that's not really necessary). It's only necessary to record the touch for billing purposes.

 

[matt_world2004]

Read my post above. The gateline could maintain a lookup table
I doubt opening a gate would contingent on verifying the Railcard status (as that's not really necessary). It's only necessary to record the touch for billing purposes.

So how would the lookup table be synced across all gatelines in real time?

Also gatelines do need to know railcard status because they have a flag that alerts RPIs to check for railcards during revenue blocks .

Currently it took three weeks for my contactless touch in at beckinham junction to be registered

 

[Trainbike46]

So how would the lookup table be synced across all gatelines in real time?

Also gatelines do need to know railcard status because they have a flag that alerts RPIs to check for railcards during revenue blocks .

That doesn't have to be real-time though; If some cards that have a railcard set don't get flagged as reailcard users until the next day (in reality it would never take that long, it is even unlikely that it would take more than 1 hour), there will be plenty of chances to check at future touch-ins or touch-outs

 

[matt_world2004]

That doesn't have to be real-time though; If some cards that have a railcard set don't get flagged as reailcard users until the next day (in reality it would never take that long, it is even unlikely that it would take more than 1 hour), there will be plenty of chances to check at future touch-ins or touch-outs

Well it kind of does if the person removes the railcard from their account because they have lost the railcard or because they have given their contactless card to someone else and then travels quickly you run the risk of someone inadvertently being prosecuted .

Even tfls current hotlisting system doesn't work well. If you are travelling on an overnight train during the reconciliation period it would hotlist the card because they haven't been able to process the payment in time.

Regularly I have had it that my touch in for a 3:30-4:30 GwR service has not had its payment processed for touching in time for me to touch out causing errors at the exit gateline

The system of of adding railcards to cintactless payment cards is much more complicated than issuing a card that uses tfl back office reconciliation but that has a railcard token stored locally.

Especially as tfl would already be manufacturing such cards for freedom passes.

And As I have pointed out before TfL are already making "Oyster" cards that operate the gatelines at Taplow they are just not for consumer use.

 

[Trainbike46]

The system of of adding railcards to cintactless payment cards is much more complicated than issuing a card that uses tfl back office reconciliation but that has a railcard token stored locally.

Personally that would be my preferred solution as well.

potentially TfL could even use these to replace existing oyster cards completely

 

[Haywain]

Well it kind of does if the person removes the railcard from their account because they have lost the railcard or because they have given their contactless card to someone else and then travels quickly you run the risk of someone inadvertently being prosecuted .

It doesn't have to be real time - it could work such that the railcard discount would only apply from the following day after being added to the account. In any event, I would expect some form of verification to take place rather than just allowing anyone to add a card. And, as with Oyster cards, a card with a railcard discount set would become non-transferrable.