I wrote about visiting my son in Scotland a few days ago, to get there I flew Flybe from Southampton Airport. Essy wasn’t able to drop me off, nor collect me from the airport so I was going to use a taxi. But then I remembered that Unilink buses run to the airport. A quick check showed that the service runs every 10 minutes at the times I wanted. I’d not used Unilink before but to get to the airport they’re great with the airport stop being right at the Departures entrance door.
As the bus drove to the airport I began to become quite envious of the driver – ticket issuing didn’t take any time at all. I would estimate that 80% of the passengers had smart cards which they simply laid on the ticket machine for a moment before being cleared. If the driver did have to sell a ticket it was either £2 for any length single journey or £3 for a day ticket. Apart from being able to issue the ticket with only 2 key presses (key presses being the bane of the Stagecoach TP5000 ticket machine) there was very little time spent counting out change, if change were needed it was always in whole pounds).
I agree with you, Paul. The only thing the smart card reader will do for a Stagecoach driver is check that the card’s valid one, not expired, not Scottish/Welsh etc. That will save a second or two which is nothing compared with the umpteen key presses to issue the ticket to the specific destination.
I don’t think that having smart cards enabled on the machine will make things any faster.
The problem is that having to issue each pass holder with a ticket to their specific destination wastes a huge amount of time.
Yes indeed UniLink are generally very quick loading. As I’ve said before I can’t wait for our machines to be enabled for SmartCards.
UniLink (being part of Go Ahead) will presumably join us using ERGs very soon.