It was bad enough having captive service stations and restaurants for overpriced products, but the toll was and still is ridiculous too, considering it was agreed there would be no toll after the construction was paid for, And it was well paid for decades ago.

Anyway there were only very few exits and they were mostly rural until you got to South Florida where you could get off and on every few miles. The captive service stations needeed to be built at the same time as the Turnpike or everybody would run out of gas back then.

Except Orlando which was a very small city before Disney came in, but their gas stations were still closed late at night and on Sunday.

Tickets were reverse engineered in a completely analog way.

The "main entrance" to the Turnpike coming south was out in the middle of nowhere where the I-75 freeway keeps going to Tampa but you smoothly get over to the main gates of the Turnpike if you want to head down to Miami instead. You would just breeze on through and pick up a ticket at the northernmost gate, and the further you traveled south, the more toll you would have to pay when you got off.

Students would get off of I-75 avoiding the Turnpike and drive on the rural roads about a half-hour until you get to the next Turnpike entrance and pick up a (very valuable) ticket there instead of at the main entrance to the north.

As you got down toward the Palm Beach area, where the northbounders and southbounders still shared the gas stations and restaurants in the central plazas, many northbound travelers would willingly trade tickets from wherever they got on in South Florida for one which will only cost them as much as if they got on at the very last chance before hitting the northernmost exit.

Northbounders would then get off right where they were going to anyway, one exit away from where we got on, and we would get off one exit away from where they got on, and everybody came out ahead, paying the minimum tolls possible.

It took a long time before any toll-takers started looking at the tickets and asking "why did it take 6 hours to only go one exit?"

I noticed that the boxes were still broken and unmaintained. I put 2 and 2 together and realized that a mobile "upgrade" was coming soon, so I kept my eyes out. And sure enough, I got myself invited to participate in the pilot project with the upgraded app.

The deadlines slipped twice but the pilot began in mid-January. So far I have not had glitches with scanning or boarding. But let me tell you.

There are disclaimers in the FAQ. Since the mobile passes are QR-based and not NFC, they absolutely require WAN connectivity on both sides in order to activate a pass. My initial testing indicated that a loss of connectivity will not invalidate an active pass, because it's endowed with a built-in expiration countdown. But we shall see.

The FAQ also says straight out, of course, that the customer must keep the phone charged in order to use the pass. Of course it goes without saying that your phone must be functional in order to scan the thing. So that's a whole tech stack that could go awry and strand you if you don't take precautions.

Hey, this may reduce fraud and friction at the farebox. I don't know. Many people will love not having another thing to lose or the convenience of purchasing passes without going somewhere (they cost way more on board a bus.) But the Luddite in me doesn't want this. I'd much rather carry around an old reliable paper-based pass, and I will go back to that for as long as I can get away with it.

But I won't turn down a $75 gift card to play along with the pilot test.

And unsurprisingly only a subset of tickets are available on the apps. Therefore the government gets its “fare simplification” it’s so badly wanted, through the back door, in a sense, the harder it pushes mobile tickets

Eg rover tickets are not on the ticketing apps. These can be excellent value.

Edit: also the government very recently announced [0] they are to scrap return fares. This will without a shadow of doubt increase prices for a great many journeys.

[0] https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/end-of-the-line-for-ret...

For example, you can ask any UK rail operator to book you a trip that includes sections run by other operators. So your purchase needs to be fed through a centralized revenue-splitting system (called LENNON iirc) anyway.

Then they got the feature request that you should be able to book specific seats and someone else shouldn't be able to book the same seat, and so on. This just can't be decentralized.

This setup does have the advantage that they can check tickets without needing a network connection, but I'd guess there would be simpler ways to add that to a centralized system.

Unfortunately, my skills weren't quite there at that point in my life, and I no longer live in Massachusetts, but this was an incredible read regardless and I feel at least a bit of closure now :)

The MBTA tickets had an option of color bars (so the conductors could just visually check if all of them match throughout all the passengers) and a QR option, so I would always try to figure out how it generates those colors, as the tickets had to be able to function offline, and as the tickets all showed the same colors regardless of passenger, they certainly weren't unique per-purchase nor used any user-unique info (though they may have been unique per-train-route).

I should take another look at it with this article as a resource.

Edit: Emphasized public and private keys

<q:01> s:196;u:296101284;i:14;c:JP4igg/YIyk03lYqnVcjFCQjDldUc7Th82Gjppb89S8I0vlCNIAYpzBgUESmeKmaaf2BHvlkuyd3opXXwEWsujuGqqakb09xrYWVlBeqY97qfwE1bynzs9FbGmG6HxnVmpM6AHROTBZa08ti/0KiR1oyKpZkrucBE9dJsJtz0qg=;x:49;

<q:01> s:196;u:297172367;i:14;c:pirqKynzF6wa7ttQJRtw8B5SfcQiWL5psEwju5OVjxLwG7hZKgJsii381A0l9hzcxsebxUJrK6Z1ZX22ILd/AMYOSx2DuQ2OHqrP5r8sNuVfMATrYOTbcioISrn/dBLN1vaQxEmZkTxLkE9837NGvsrlP7mF+BWYps3jqA/MfG0=;x:25;

Not as bad as a public API, but probably some degree of a personal safety risk given the security around MFC cards and the ability to ascertain pattern-of-life from the data

   > $ curl -s 'https://device.theticketkeeper.com/download_keys?device_name=abc' |  jq
   > {
   >   "return_code": "error",
   >   "message": "Device not registered."
   > }

I'm fascinated by "transport billing" - it's such a complex problem, owing to the different infrastructure providers, different operators, fares, holidays, special events, and weird edge-case situations.

Except mobile tickets make fraud trivial - getting off the train without a ticket, at a station with a ticket barrier? Just show them your powered off phone and say 'my phone died' and they'll let you out, no questions asked.

In the UK, a guard with good eyesight and a sprightly, cheerful manner can almost run through the carriages shouting "tickets please!" and see, with a single glance, all s/he needs.

Then she gets to the muppets with phones. They faff, fumble and fuss. They scowl at being interrupted watching videos, browsing social media and listening to music. They can't load their app. They huff and sigh disrespectfully. The guard can't get focus. For a moment they point phones at each other like cowboys in a gunfight standoff. She doesn't have a wifi signal, so now there's a long and embarrassing delay while passenger and guard stare at each others feet.

Finally a joyful beep releases them from technological tension. Everyone in the car sighs with relief and she moves on to the next grinning smombie.

The whole technology is a festering shitshow foisted on people by over-zealous tech peddlers.

Paper tickets rule.

More proof that Apple's walled garden is a scam: it fails to protect against the thing that its alleged purpose of existence is to protect against.

It could go awry if Google fucked up, Samsung/phone manufacturer fucks up, battery or charger fucks up, software developer fucks up, internet, etc, etc.

we are replacing reliable sustems with fragile ones everywhere

Checking in, they can charge you minimum fare and checking out they can charge you remainder.

They could also charge you maximum fare and return remainder on checkout.

You can even keep track of card and give discounts for multiple rides.

All without registration. Works with watches and phones too.

Why they rolling out QR-based public transit ticketing in 2023 when NFC (which all phone platforms support even with a flat battery) solutions are table-stakes now?

I bought a single-use one-way subway ticket recently. When I got to the turnstiles, none of them had slots to swipe or insert the ticket.

Of course, it's 2023. You can tap the paper ticket as if you had a refillable or monthly pass, it has the RFID circuitry sandwiched between paper layers. No more mechanical moving parts which can break and slow down the rush hour commute.

As already shown in this thread, even the employees don't understand the very complicated fare rules. My manager was very proud of winning a half hour long argument with a ticket inspector about the Conditions of Carriage, but most of us just want to buy a ticket and go.

Or give everyone a national fare allowance to boot, like the national subsidy for maintenance of roads and their other associated costs.

I disagree.

> This setup does have the advantage that they can check tickets without needing a network connection

This is the most important reason why it is implemented this way. Checking happens on rowing handheld devices which have frequently no good internet connection. Even in the turnstiles where you would think they could afford a reliable connection if said connection goes down you can’t block the flow of people.

Reliability and speed of checking was clearly the most important features they optimised for. Security, in the sense that passengers can’t just mint tickets for themselces, is a close second.

The beauty is that every centralised reporting can be deffered. In case the centralised database is down, or the checker’s network is down, you just store the timestamp and the signed ticket data and report it once things are working again. The centralised system doesn’t even need to trust the checker computers. Railway company A cannot mint a ticket from railway company B. They don’t have the keys to do that. So they cannot fraudelently divert revenue from each other. Neither accidentally nor intentionally.

> but I'd guess there would be simpler ways to add that to a centralized system.

I’m all ears. How would you do it simpler?

But it’s probably not worth the hassle and once the ticket is sold you can have it be signed by the centralized system so you can verify the signature offline easily.

My local station doesn't sell tickets. It has no office. I can buy an advance then drive miles to a totally different station to print them out or just buy it on my phone even on the way to the station and be done with it. I guarantee you buying from the ticket inspector is slower than showing them my phone.

I have my digital ticket ready when the guard's behind me, interrupting my video/HNing far longer than is necessary to do so, and everyone else is asking for 'X from <last station they can remember> please', cursing that this train actually had someone to call 'tickets please', as I feel like a mug for actually paying in advance every time.

Paper tickets suck. It's already a pain having to navigation the station to find your platform, and then add onto it trying to find a ticket machine. Make sure you get the right ticket machine because multiple train companies operate from this station!

And then you have to hold on to it for the duration of your journey and not lose it, otherwise you'll face the fine.

Could depend on when you travel I suppose.

Using your phone is much slower and there's a significant chance it'll just fail and hold up the person behind you (me).

From the article, it seems unlikely that a data connection is required to validate a ticket, except to prevent the same ticket being shown twice to different inspectors within a short timeframe.

Today you can also have everything on your phone which then gets scanned withe QR-Code. BTW, this code changes every few seconds so screenshots don't work. You can also instead of purchasing a ticket do something that is called "check-in" where you check-in before you get on the train and a GPS type ticket is issues. At the end of the day the best possible rate for you is then calculated and your are billed. Downside is, you need to be "tracked" by the train company for this to work.

However the process to inspect tickets is again as fast or faster than it was before. In fact when someone has paper tickets (specifically papers from non-Swiss ticket offices (France, Italy etc.)) it can take longer.

There is also a rule if you can't present your ticket in a timely manner it's considered invalid. This never happens but when the conductor yells tickets please, get your phone out.

[1] https://www.swisspass.ch/new-swisspass?lang=en

[2] https://hymnos.existenz.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/DSC037...

I've only ever had it checked by the barriers, I can't remember the last time I saw a conductor checking tickets on a train.

People lose paper tickets. People throw them on the ground. Stations are littered with them. Oh, and people do spend ages looking through their pockets, bags, coats and other places for where their paper ticket is at.

You're just being contrarian because you're on a tech website, tbh.