Luas Smart Card
 

Does the Luas smart card plan to ever be more than a prepaid single journey card? I've been using it a lot lately and it would probably be cheaper for me to use a weekly ticket, this would make my smart card redundant. Is there any plans to allow common sense things like weekly / monthly tickets to be purchased on the smart card. This is theoretically a very easy task but like all things with Irish public transport, it has to be made as difficult as possible for the customers.

or like something like a limit on a weekly/monthly spend, where it recognises when you've reached that limit and stops charging - so you never pay more than a wkly/mthly ticket

As far as I know, any changes to the smartcard are tied into the whole integrated ticketing farce which means they won't happen for years.

Once again this country amazes me. "Lets make sure that consumers get fleeced for years for no good reason other than our own inadequacies."

In fairness they are hiring a yesman /fallguy to get the whole thing running....

How are the payments to Dublin Bus accounted for when the luas isn't running?

Or to Bus Eireann yesterday like? from IE?

I don't know or care. All I'm concerned about is Luas. If the RPA wanted to cap the weekly spend on Smart cards so it was no more expensive than a weekly ticket, they could. They simply won't as they have to carry on this integrated ticketing charade.*


* Only a charade as it could easily be set up tomorrow if there was any political will.

I meant if CIE companies accept luas tickets when there's a snafu, it shows integrated ticketing is easily possible if heads got knocked together.

The RPA are useless and lacking in vision. I've posted about the carpark response and the committee have the whole 'sher 40m trams on the red line is a mad idea. Why would we do that?'


Jim Henson should sue for trademark infringement....

My understanding of the Luas/Dublin Bus arrangements are that when Luas suffers a grand mal the Control Centre notifies Dublin Bus who then notify drivers via radio ON THOSE ROUTES ADJACENT TO THE AFFECTED LINE.

Bus Atha Cliath then recieve an hourly rate lump sum to honour Luas-Only tickets.
This sum is of course pro-rata for outages of shorter duration.
The same system is also in place for DART breakdowns.

These replacement arrangements are generally smooth running,but have only been placed on a firm Accountancy footing since Luas arived.

Prior to that the Dart/Bus Atha Cliath arrangements were somewhat "flexible" with little real adherence to a payment requirement at all.

However it appears that some forensic accounting on Dublin Bus`s part identified the provision of such service capacity as one which was becoming an ever greater imposition on it`s own resources hence the adoption of the much clearer "Rate for the Job" system we now have.

Problems occur when the information doesn't filter down to drivers.

Sorry if this is off-topic, but are Luas smart cards accepted on busses when Luas is out of operation? I assume busses have no way of checking that you have "touched in" to the system. If you have "touched in" and the bus doesn't leave you close to a Luas stop, do you have to walk to the Luas stop to "touch out"?

It's also worth noting, that you can't "touch out" at the same stop as you "touch in", so if you "touch in" and patiently wait for your tram, and then find out about a problem, you have potentially been charged the maximum fare for a journey you could not make.

Lost,
I emailed the rpa before when I got a bus to stillorgan and then a taxi to stillorgan( you'll know if it happens to you and it's raining) to get my car from the car park after the luas decided not to run one friday.
They sent me a check for the price of a return ticket when I told them I had an annual DB/IE ticket

Well if you touch out at a different machine to the one you used it should work, it does charge you but not sure how much

It charges you for a journey within one zone. Decided to test it one night at 2am. I may or may not have been in a local hostelry sampling their wares before the urge to experiment came over me.

Assuming normal services finish at about 01:15 surely it shouldn't have permitted this?

In fact that is what I originally decided to test. It did let me tag on.

The RPA "smart" card is the worst use of the word 'smart' I have come across. There are not features that actually make it 'smart', it is just a pre-paid digital ticket, single journey, ticket.

You can't tag on at a stop you just tagged off at.

e.g. Was going to do Heuston -> St James -> Jervis as there was a huge queue at heuston and the next inbound tram was 12min away.

Tagged on at Heuston, Took the outbound from heuston to St James's.
Tagged off at St James and couldn't tag back on for the inbound journey. (even on a different reader).

Maybe there's a timeout period. It does make sense not to retag someone on just because they swiped it twice while getting off.

kevin

It should let you tag off at a different machine at the same stop, tried this in Heuston and it did work

Of course there are defective readers at some stops

Another irritating thing
 

I hate change, I never carry it but have a load of it I used to use for bus fare.

Today I went to top up my smart card with 10euro worth of change. I was nearly finished topping up when the machine displayed "Coin limit reached." Is this a limit on the machine or per transaction. What is the amount? I have to do something to get rid of all my change and I thought this would do it but apparently not.

Legally, one is not obliged to accpet more than, I think, 50 coins in a transaction.