this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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Hey...we already have that without needing to use GPS. No really, we have that, without needing to use GPS. No. Really. We have two systems in fact.
We have m-tickets. Most major train, tram and bus companies in the UK have that. You can go onto your phone and buy a ticket without the need for GPS tracking. There's also Contactless on your phone. My city has something called TapTapCap/ToTo. On the buses, you can pay for your fare by tapping on a contactless terminal and it tracks how many journeys you make and caps the fare at the price of a day ticket if you make more than three Journeys. The Trams here have ToTo which is the same deal, but you have to tap on at the smart card terminal and tap off at your destination, as long as you do that and don't go to the Airport: you get the same deal.
That can easily be implemented. Fuck, mTickets have been implimented in Scotland. All you'd need to do is adapt the smartcard terminals, which use the technology as the bus passes, to do something like taptapcap. And before you say "oooh, we couldn't possibly put Smartcard totems on remote stations or Parliamentary stations", there are smart card terminals on every station on the West Highland Line. Yes, including the Fort William to Malaig section. There are Smartcard terminals on the Far North and Kyle of Lochalsh Lines. If Scotrail can do that at places like Dunrobin Castle, GBR can put Smartcard Terminals at Drigg, no GPS surveillance required.
We do the same in my part of the US where transit kinda sucks. You just tap a credit card (or phone w/ contactless payments) or physical card w/ chip on any bus or train and it charges the appropriate amount (i.e. day pass if you exceed some amount). It's not complicated, you just tap when you get on, and tap when you get off, and as long as you use the same payment method, it just works.
It's not complicated at all. At no point is GPS tracking needed, you just need to process the payment and link them together based on the unique identifier you're already using to process payments.