The London system is indeed a flat fare - 90p I think. Cash fares, on the other hand, start at £2. What Dublin Bus could do is say that all smartcard journeys will be charged at the lowest cash fare (currently €1.15), which would provide a pretty powerful incentive to use a smartcard). I have no idea, however, whether that will make any sort of financial sense for it after balancing the revenue lost with time gained and reduced expense processing sacks of coins.

How come? The Amsterdam system requires you to tag off on a bus.

It really is very simple, tag on when you get on a metro, tram, bus or boat, tag off when you get off, 0.70 base + 0.10c per km... base not charged again if you tag on within 35mins.... does Dublin really need anything more complicated than that?

Buses in Amsterdam have central exit doors, and some have three sets of doors.

Yup, some do, some don't, I dont see that as an issue tho.. there is nothing stopping DB putting a smart card reader at the bottom of the stairs for people to tag off on... the readers don't have to be at the entrance/exit.

Next phase is rolling out

The old turnstiles are acquiring a strange shaped box, where a smartcard reader will be provided on both sides so you can tag on and tag off

Salthill, Booterstown, Sydney Parade and others have acquired them

The smart card attachment is starting to appear on the TVM's as well

Sandymount has also got the new readers on the turnstiles. TVM rollout seems to be limited to one or two per station for now.

Greystones has also acquired the readers on the turnstiles.

Unless you accidentally tag off while moving up the stairs/back down the bus (is this possible?).


I'm confused by the Amsterdam thing - they still have the old strippenkaart zonal system on the website - are they phasing this out in favour of the per km chipkaart?

I've never had this problem.. you need to be quite close to the reader for it to pick it up

Yes, we're transitioning at the moment.. the strippenkaart will eventually be pased out altogether. The zonal system remains for season tickets.

Unlikely - with the card by itself, the range is only 30-50mm at most. In a wallet its less, especially if there are coins.

They had the turnstiles in Killester taken apart when I went through Wednesday evening, back in place Thursday morning with a bit welded on top of each which I presume is to cater for smart cards. They look a bit weird, and already I've come close to clipping an elbow off them twice - not sure how well they were thought out.

scanners at stations
 

Passing through the passenger gates at Drumcondra station this morning, I noticed the new scanning units for 'smart' cards being rolled out this summer. I did not get a chance to take a snap but they're clunky and grey and allow for passengers to scan going on to the platform and coming off it.

Update: attached photo

They've shown up at Sandymount too.

And Howth and Malahide have the smart card readers both on the platforms for out of hours and also attached to the old ticket barrier machines in the stations.

Lansdowne Road has the purple back box on the night exit and Dalkey has the stainless steel base for the unit in the photo there.

Smart card readers attached to the top of the old turnstiles in Killester as of yesterday afternoon. Still a terrible design, I'm sure other people have clobbered themselves or caught bags on the lumps now sticking up out of the turnstiles.

why aren't they bringing in the new turnstiles at these stations?

Cost or possibly the fear of block obsolescence in the future (its better to buy in a few batches than buy everything in the one go, only for it all to wear out at the same time).

The stations which received the new gates are typically high volume stations where passengers exited via the gate and not the barrier line.

The reader element has been fitted to some of the smartcard readers. Shankill and Dalkey appear to be the first.