Have you not used a modern contactless payment system before? They're fast enough to be used on the barriers of underground railway systems which see thousands of passengers pass through at peak times. Even the time taken to empty the contents of your wallet into the appropriate slot of a cash system takes longer than those machines, never mind time taken to process the notes and coins, dispense change and allow you to put that change back in the appropriate compartments of your wallet. And change-dispensing machines with their scanning software, moving parts and need to be fully stocked with change break down at least as often as networks for card based payments.
> Have you not used a modern contactless payment system before? They're fast enough to be used on the barriers of underground railway systems which see thousands of passengers pass through at peak times.
That isn't that impressive when you consider the equivalent traffic was handled in cash before electronic payment systems even existed.
> Even the time taken to empty the contents of your wallet into the appropriate slot of a cash system takes longer than those machines, never mind time taken to process the notes and coins, dispense change and allow you to put that change back in the appropriate compartments of your wallet.
Describing all the steps in detail doesn't make the total any longer. And half of that stuff can be done in parallel with other stuff. You can get out your money while you're waiting in line. You can put it away while you're walking out of the store. It doesn't add any real latency.
> And change-dispensing machines with their scanning software, moving parts and need to be fully stocked with change break down at least as often as networks for card based payments.
Stores typically have more than one checkout machine to handle the volume during peak traffic times, so one can be down and there is not even any consequence outside of peak hours, and only a minor delay even then.
If a network is down, it's down. Retail stores typically don't have redundant internet connections.
Seriously just admit that you never used a contactless system and stop here. It is becoming quite ridiculous and surreal if you are saying that using cash is as fast as tapping with a contactless to enter the underground.
I would really be curious how could Waterloo handle over 100 million passengers per year with cash.
NYC used subway tokens until the 1980s, which are effectively cash. So did pretty much everything else up to that point, since not long before that electronic payment systems didn't exist.
The obvious solution for extremely high volume systems is to have the fares come out to even numbers so there is no need to make change. How long are you imagining it takes to drop a coin or two into a turnstile?
The obvious solution is the status quo contactless payment system that can collect £4.90 from your wallet faster than the ticket holders can find the slot.
Even if London Underground decided to upset millions of commuters by raising the price to a round £5 in the most expensive attempt to rescue an incorrect HN claim yet, the contactless system would still be quicker than the machine that scans a fiver. Trust us, we've actually used both...
Your claim was that it isn't possible, but it is possible as evidenced by the fact that it has actually been done in the past.
> Even if London Underground decided to upset millions of commuters by raising the price to a round £5
If people would really be so upset with a 2% fare increase then imagine how happy they would be to round it down rather than up. It's even good policy -- encourage mass transit over driving.
For that matter you could issue single ride transit tokens for whatever exact price you like. The point of cash isn't to use a specific currency, it's to allow people to travel and make small purchases anonymously.
Even what NYC does now is better than using contactless payments, because you can buy a Metro Card for cash without providing a name. It's not quite as good because they still track the cards, but it's still better than having all of everyone's movements perfectly tracked by an Orwellian state computer.
> the contactless system would still be quicker than the machine that scans a fiver. Trust us, we've actually used both...
Comparing the fastest available electronic system to some kind of anachronism with paper tickets and slow readers is obviously going to favor the newer system -- although even then it's still a matter of seconds. But how is that the fair comparison? The comparison has to be between the best available electronic system and the best available cash-equivalent system that preserves privacy.
And dropping a dollar coin or a transit token into a slot in a turnstile is as close to instantaneous as makes no difference. Certainly not enough to justify tracking everyone's movements.
