Launch of Dublin Short Hop Zone Smartcard

[Mark Gleeson]

The long awaited pay as you go rail smartcard went public last night.

You can buy a smartcard from any TVM in the Dublin Short Hop Zone or online at http://www.irishrail.ie/smartcard

The card costs 5 euro. Provided you have at least 1 cent credit the system will allow you to travel, so 4 euro of that 5 is actually usable credit

Fares are charged at half the normal return fare for the journey undertaken

You can top up online and review your history http://www.irishrail.ie/smartcard

Smartcards for children, scholar fares as well as season tickets are coming and these will be personalised with a photo. Fancy features such as fare capping may come in due course, ensuring you get the cheapest fare for the journeys you have undertaken.

Rail Users Ireland was involved in the user testing, so we have a full knowledge of how it all works. We have worked through several problems with Irish Rail so the user experience should be extremely good and the functionality is significantly more advanced than the luas smartcard.

Over coming weeks watch out at city centre stations, can't say more.

[markpb]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

You can top up online and review your history http://www.irishrail.ie/smartcard

They've proceeded to launch with the proxy-breaking port I see. That was a smart move.

the functionality is significantly more advanced than the luas smartcard.

Customers won't care about any technical improvements and for most people (tag on, tag off, pay a reduced rate) they're exactly the same. The big difference is that it took Irish Rail five years to catch up with the RPA.

[Mark Gleeson]

The IE card is miles ahead of the Luas, despite the fact both are physically identical.

Passengers will care since the features are all about ease of use.

You can't top up online, you can't review transactions online and you can't do chargebacks on the Luas system, Irish Rail can. You can walk into any station with a ticket vending machine right now and buy a smartcard and choose the credit you want on the card.

Despite using the exact same equipment the RPA never bothered to implement this for Luas, which is worrying if they are the brains behind ITS.

The RPA of course have forced a reduction in functionality as they are making heavy work of the ITS project. We have received the full briefing which is a tad commercially sensitive, but the IE system can do a whole lot more and hopefully we will be seeing some extra features in the months ahead. You should be able to put a monthly ticket onto the card for instance.

Port 8443 is actually a fairly common port to use, its not a permanent issue its being looked into right now. I can view the site through the firewall I'm behind which is strict.

[Mark Gleeson]

For reference if you already have registered for seat booking on IE's site, the same email and password will work the smartcard login page.

[Mark Hennessy]

IT related questions about the smartcard website spun off here:

http://www.railusers.ie/forum/showthread.php?t=12322

Please keep this thread for actual smartcard announcements and issues.

[karlr42]

I've got a very weird issue going on-
I bought a card on Monday night from a TVM in Pearse, initial balance €10. I haven't tagged it off or on since(don't need the train until Friday). But when I check the card's history on Irish Rail's site, I am shown that oit was issued a day after I bought it, and on Tuesday it was topped-up twice in the morning in Pearse, travelled to Maynooth, then came back to Pearse in the evening.
Now the card has €44 left on it! I have triple-checked and the number on the card in my wallet matches the one on the site. The only possible thing I could have done was that I put my wallet, containing a DB monthly RFID card and the IR smart card up to a Dublin Bus validator, and got angrily beeped at until I removed the DB card and did it separately.
Any ideas? I think maybe IR's server has an issue, or maybe the card's number was misprinted, because I seem to be shown another person's card!

[Thomas Ralph]

Best suggestion would be to ring up the number on the back of the card 9am-5pm and they'll look into it.

[Thomas Ralph]

Date/Time Location Action
26/04/10 6:21 PM Sandymount 11188 Issue a card at s sales device
26/04/10 6:21 PM Sandymount 11188 Issue a card at s sales device
26/04/10 6:21 PM Sandymount 11188 Issue a card at s sales device
15/12/09 4:10 PM Customer Services Centre 391101 production at encoding machine

[Mark Gleeson]

For reference the codes in location are

First digit is tag on/off device

1 = Ticket vending machine
4 = Std exit gate
5 = Wide exit gate
6 = Night gate post
7 = Top of old turnstile

The 2nd, 3rd & 4th digit are the station id as per the IE ticket system. If its a ticket machine the 2nd is the machine ID number, the 3 following the station code

Last 2 digits are the barrier number

[Colm Moore]

Karl, have you tried registering the card on the website? I suspect its possible someone accidentally registered your card, but that doesn't explain the trip reported. I take it that you didn't do such a trip. It would make sense to phone Irish Rail at 1850 211 777 or use the contact form. http://www.irishrail.ie/contact_us/c..._sc_issues.asp

Originally Posted by karlr42

The only possible thing I could have done was that I put my wallet, containing a DB monthly RFID card and the IR smart card up to a Dublin Bus validator, and got angrily beeped at until I removed the DB card and did it separately.

I don't know the exact standards involved, but strictly speaking you can't swipe two of these types of cards at the same time. Sometimes you will get away with it at the train station as the Irish Rail card will register at a greater distance than a DB one.

Dublin Bus or Luas cards or equipment should not interfere with an Irish Rail card.

And yes, presenting an IR card on a bus will result in a very upset card reader. Eventually (probably in about a years time) you will hopefully be able to get a smartcard that works across a variety of transport services http://www.rpa.ie/en/its

[karlr42]

Originally Posted by Colm Moore

Karl, have you tried registering the card on the website? I suspect its possible someone accidentally registered your card, but that doesn't explain the trip reported. I take it that you didn't do such a trip. It would make sense to phone Irish Rail at 1850 211 777 or use the contact form. http://www.irishrail.ie/contact_us/c..._sc_issues.asp

I registered it straight away on receiving the card. I will hold off on getting in touch with IR until I make my first journey with the card on Friday.

[Mark Gleeson]

If you don't get any joy, let us know and we can pass the details on.

First thing you can check is the transaction history at any ticket vending machine. It will be different

[karlr42]

Tvm balance check gave the correct 10 euro. Must just be a server side issue. Tagged on at Pearse, off at Clonsilla, tvm in clonsilla gives correct history

[Thomas Ralph]

The online system can take a little while to catch up with the card.

[fergn]

Got my smartcard at Connolly this evening. Tagged on and tagged off no problems. I registered as soon as I got home and checked my history and it says my card number followed by (null). Then E-Purse Amount: €0.00 when I should have 6 euro credit and then 25/11/09 4:59 PM Customer Services Centre 391101 production at encoding machine. How long does it take before it will show the correct details and whats the null after my card no. for?

[Colm Moore]

Originally Posted by fergn

I registered as soon as I got home and checked my history and it says my card number followed by (null).

"Null" is the default name if you don't give the card a user name. I've registered a few times as "Colm Moore #1", "Colm Moore #2" and "Colm Moore #3". If you want to change it, unregister the card and re-register it in whatever name you want to give it.

For a business you could call them "Staff" or "Staff #567" or "Sales" or "Repairs" if they are shared between staff, but relevant to departments.

For family you could have "Mum", "Dad", "Little Johnny", "Mary" and "Grandma" for when she vists (or "Visitor").

Then E-Purse Amount: €0.00 when I should have 6 euro credit

Did you see the display (top of ticket gate / tag-off post) when you were tagging on / off? It will give a balance.

and then 25/11/09 4:59 PM Customer Services Centre 391101 production at encoding machine.

Thats just a relic in the system of when the card number was added to the system.

How long does it take before it will show the correct details

They are saying 24 hours for the moment, but hope to have that reduced substantially. I'm not sure if it will reach real time, but it will improve a lot.

[maxheadroom]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

For reference if you already have registered for seat booking on IE's site, the same email and password will work the smartcard login page.

FYI, this is not working for my irish rail account.

[Colm Moore]

Originally Posted by maxheadroom

FYI, this is not working for my irish rail account.

There has been a semi-persistent "Online topup is unavailable." message on the Smartcard page over the last few weeks (it was cleared last week). Are you able to do any other Smartcard functions?

[Mark Gleeson]

If you registered the card by phone during the trial period in March/April you will need to change you password on the main irishrail site, in doing so both passwords will become the same.

[maxheadroom]

Originally Posted by Colm Moore

There has been a semi-persistent "Online topup is unavailable." message on the Smartcard page over the last few weeks (it was cleared last week). Are you able to do any other Smartcard functions?

I don't actually get that far. I bought a smartcard from q TVM. When I go to register the card online, it tells me to log in with my irishrail.ie username and password. This does not work. If I use the same username/password combination on the main irishrail site it works fine.