ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[panamaniac]

"East"bound? 

Charles is a regional road, and the region uses waterloo compass directions, not Kitchener.  of course the road is still labeled east west. 

Really I shouldn't have used any cardinal directions.

OK - southbound on Charles St W. seems very Kitchener to me.

[ac3r]

The booth seating is the worst, always see people using the other as a foot rest. At least on the bus there's a gap under it and some use that instead.

Yeah seeing this annoys me. It makes me want to tell the person, but I don't want to get into an argument with some kid. After a year or two of rainy days and snowy weather, the seats are going to look pretty awful, depending on how frequent they are replaced.

[eh-cun71]

I haven't seen anyone working on the UW Station bus terminal for at least 2 weeks now. Does anyone know why this work has halted? They were making solid progress before they stopped.

[KevinL]

I'm guessing one crew was doing demolition/base preparation and another will build the actual roadways and curbs.

It's officially listed for completion in 'late 2019' on GRT materials, for the record.

[Bytor]

After helping several people tap in at a kiosk at Borden Station this morning (and watching people do this for weeks, occasionally helping), I have a hypothesis as to why people think the kiosks don't seem to work.

All three people, when prompted by the kiosk to resent the card to the reader, very timorously hovering their card up just in front of the reader and got the error screen. When I asked if they ever used tap in a store with their debit or credit cards and how you have to lay your card right down on the machine to pay by tap,one woman said yes. She then got it to work right away.

The other two still held their cards in front of the sensor instead of touching it and still got the error. When I asked the second person if I could do it for them to show, I placed the card right on the sensor and the transaction was successfully. I said to the third person "See how I laid the card right on the sensor instead of holding it in front?" They nodded, tried again doing it that way and it worked for them.

I've seen similar things at the toll poles at the ends of the platforms.

So my hypothesis is this - most people having a problem aren't tapping. They are waving their fare cards near the sensor and the responding signal from the card is not strong enough or the card is not powered enough and transaction fails. Incorrect usage rather than faulty implementation.

It could be an education issue. I used to see this same issue on the busses until people got used to actually tapping the cards to the fare boxes instead of just waving them over top, and I hope that people would be able to generalize to the kiosks and toll poles but that dies not seem to be the case for some.

[danbrotherston]

After helping several people tap in at a kiosk at Borden Station this morning (and watching people do this for weeks, occasionally helping), I have a hypothesis as to why people think the kiosks don't seem to work.

All three people, when prompted by the kiosk to resent the card to the reader, very timorously hovering their card up just in front of the reader and got the error screen. When I asked if they ever used tap in a store with their debit or credit cards and how you have to lay your card right down on the machine to pay by tap,one woman said yes. She then got it to work right away.

The other two still held their cards in front of the sensor instead of touching it and still got the error. When I asked the second person if I could do it for them to show, I placed the card right on the sensor and the transaction was successfully. I said to the third person "See how I laid the card right on the sensor instead of holding it in front?" They nodded, tried again doing it that way and it worked for them.

I've seen similar things at the toll poles at the ends of the platforms.

So my hypothesis is this - most people having a problem aren't tapping. They are waving their fare cards near the sensor and the responding signal from the card is not strong enough or the card is not powered enough and transaction fails. Incorrect usage rather than faulty implementation.

It could be an education issue. I used to see this same issue on the busses until people got used to actually tapping the cards to the fare boxes instead of just waving them over top, and I hope that people would be able to generalize to the kiosks and toll poles but that dies not seem to be the case for some.

Incorrect usage *IS* faulty implmentation.

http://www.nixdell.com/classes/HCI-and-D...dition.pdf

[Bytor]

After helping several people tap in at a kiosk at Borden Station this morning (and watching people do this for weeks, occasionally helping), I have a hypothesis as to why people think the kiosks don't seem to work.

All three people, when prompted by the kiosk to resent the card to the reader, very timorously hovering their card up just in front of the reader and got the error screen. When I asked if they ever used tap in a store with their debit or credit cards and how you have to lay your card right down on the machine to pay by tap,one woman said yes. She then got it to work right away.

The other two still held their cards in front of the sensor instead of touching it and still got the error. When I asked the second person if I could do it for them to show, I placed the card right on the sensor and the transaction was successfully. I said to the third person "See how I laid the card right on the sensor instead of holding it in front?" They nodded, tried again doing it that way and it worked for them.

I've seen similar things at the toll poles at the ends of the platforms.

So my hypothesis is this - most people having a problem aren't tapping. They are waving their fare cards near the sensor and the responding signal from the card is not strong enough or the card is not powered enough and transaction fails. Incorrect usage rather than faulty implementation.

It could be an education issue. I used to see this same issue on the busses until people got used to actually tapping the cards to the fare boxes instead of just waving them over top, and I hope that people would be able to generalize to the kiosks and toll poles but that dies not seem to be the case for some.

Incorrect usage *IS* faulty implmentation.

http://www.nixdell.com/classes/HCI-and-D...dition.pdf

I disagree. If you need to lay the card on the sensor because it has to be close enough to read the NFC's weak signal, and the user holds it up too far away, that's not faulty implementation, it's the user not following instructions. Sometimes the user is just doing things wrong.

[tomh009]

Incorrect usage *IS* faulty implmentation.

http://www.nixdell.com/classes/HCI-and-D...dition.pdf

I disagree. If you need to lay the car on the sensor because it has to be close enough to read the NFC's weak signal, and the user holds it up too far away, that's not faulty implementation, it's the user not following instructions. Sometimes the user is just doing things wrong.

Or insufficient instructions. But I agree, just because you actually need to touch the card (as with tap-to-pay) that doesn't make the technical implementation faulty. One would need to question the instructions, though. "Tap to travel", anyone?

[jamincan]

Or the instructions are inadequate. Regardless, the fix should theoretically be much more straight forward.

[ijmorlan]

Incorrect usage *IS* faulty implmentation.

That’s taking it way too far. Replace “is” with “may be” or even “is often” and you have something.

People using technology have to take some responsibility for their use of it. An extreme example is something like a chainsaw; no matter how many idiots kill themselves by dropping trees on themselves, that isn’t a problem with the chainsaw design. Now of course this is a fare card interface, not a chainsaw, and it needs to be super-simple and able to be used without significant training. But if it read cards at a distance, it might read a card you didn’t mean to present, which would be another problem. So the “it’s faulty implementation” fix (i.e., make it read at a larger distance) for the problem of “people don’t actually touch their cards to the reader” isn’t necessarily acceptable.

[MidTowner]

People not holding the card close enough to the reader is not the only issue. As recently as yesterday, I have encountered fare poles that displayed as out of order, and fare poles that gave error messages regardless of how the card was presented (I 'tap' every day on either bus or on train platform, so am pretty confident I am doing it correctly).

[CuilTard]

After helping several people tap in at a kiosk at Borden Station this morning (and watching people do this for weeks, occasionally helping), I have a hypothesis as to why people think the kiosks don't seem to work.

All three people, when prompted by the kiosk to resent the card to the reader, very timorously hovering their card up just in front of the reader and got the error screen. When I asked if they ever used tap in a store with their debit or credit cards and how you have to lay your card right down on the machine to pay by tap,one woman said yes. She then got it to work right away.

The other two still held their cards in front of the sensor instead of touching it and still got the error. When I asked the second person if I could do it for them to show, I placed the card right on the sensor and the transaction was successfully. I said to the third person "See how I laid the card right on the sensor instead of holding it in front?" They nodded, tried again doing it that way and it worked for them.

I've seen similar things at the toll poles at the ends of the platforms.

So my hypothesis is this - most people having a problem aren't tapping. They are waving their fare cards near the sensor and the responding signal from the card is not strong enough or the card is not powered enough and transaction fails. Incorrect usage rather than faulty implementation.

It could be an education issue. I used to see this same issue on the busses until people got used to actually tapping the cards to the fare boxes instead of just waving them over top, and I hope that people would be able to generalize to the kiosks and toll poles but that dies not seem to be the case for some.

I'm not sure how, but it seems like Presto has already overcome these issues. I didn't find any ambiguity about how to use your presto card on that system. It seems to me that EasyGo might just be experiencing the same growing pains that come from re-inventing the wheel? IMO we should learn from how other fare card rollouts solved these issues.

[Bytor]

People not holding the card close enough to the reader is not the only issue. As recently as yesterday, I have encountered fare poles that displayed as out of order, and fare poles that gave error messages regardless of how the card was presented (I 'tap' every day on either bus or on train platform, so am pretty confident I am doing it correctly).

Those are different issues, and I suspect that they happen less often then people doing what I describe, though that is based only on my personal observations.

I note that in the videos for the toll poles and the bus farebox, it is shown pretty explicitly to lay the card down on the sensor, and back at the start I saw a lot of people just waving their card over top and getting the error. I see that much more rarely now on the busses but I still see it fairly often at kiosks and poles. I'm a little surprised that so many people are unable to generalise and do it the same way in each circumstance.

[KevinL]

505 got side-swiped by a car on Ottawa between Bedford and Dundas. Didn't look too serious, but one of the step bumpers by the doors was sheared off and twisted up.

[ac3r]

In the initial marketing for the cards, they should have had more explanation but also just a catchy phrase like Presto has: "tap on, tap off". This isn't crystal clear, but at least implies you need to physically tap your card on the readers.

Where the instructional videos even show the actor holding the card at a distance to the readers:



I imagine this will just be something people get used to, though, and regardless there will always be some moments when you don't realize it didn't work. The fare inspectors are pretty relaxed about it. They are able to tell your transaction history on their little devices and probably have a pretty good judgement when it comes to deciding whether you probably just missed it or are a serial fare evader. I've never seen them be anything but polite, assuming the person they're talking to doesn't immediately get hostile about things.