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Comment by azeotropic | Hacker News Reader

We have this. It's called a Federal Reserve Note. You may have seen them before.

CityLab is beyond parody. Yes, sure, the real problem with public transit is that jet-setting tourists have to install new apps on their iPhoneX in each city they visit.

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London already doesn't allow cash on buses. There's huge costs in installing bill collectors. People paying cash on a bus slows everyone else down. Making everything electronic would solve a lot of issues.

Buying a smartcard or even magnetic day ticket for cash needs not be hard.

It isn't, but if you're wanting to board a bus you'll need to find an open newsagents or rail station nearby to sell you one. In which case the universal smartcard or app suddenly seems a lot more convenient

Is finding an open newsagent/rail station really that big of a deal?

In Sweden (in Skåne at least, since the rail/bus solutions are all regional there) you have both options. You can buy your tickets on an app that you scan on the bus or train, or you can buy a smart card anonymously with cash when there is an open newsstand/rail station and use that to beep onto trains and buses. So if you go the anonymous route when you need to top up your smart card with money you can do it with cash from a kiosk in an automated machine 24/7, so long as there is a kiosk around (every rail station has them).

With a fair bit of planning it’s not too hard to stay completely credit-card and app free with this solution. You just have to make sure that you are near an open rail station/newsstand to purchase the smartcard initially (and I think even some of the grocery stores sell them) and then onwards have enough money on the smart card to get you to where you can top up from a kiosk. Given the rail coverage in Sweden it’s not too hard to do.

I agree. I'm only trying to show that an electronic ticket and not being personally tracked are compatible, unlike suggested upthread. All it takes is to buy / refill an electronic ticket with cash.

And yet it often is. And, even when it isn't, knowing how much to pay can be hard.

The ideal system is one in which you use the "universal transit payment card" desired in the article to get on the transit system, then use it again to get off (if the transit system requires it - no all do), without having to give even a single thought to how much money you are spending.

When you have different payment cards/passes/tickets in different systems, you have to figure out not only how to buy those tickets, but how much to buy (so that you don't depart the area having vastly overbought - or so that you don't run out of loaded fare value before you end your trip).

I think this is less of a big deal in London because-- and the article entirely glosses over this prospect-- TfL accept contactless (e.g. contactless-enabled debit/credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay). This means anyone can land in London and immediately ride public transit using their existing bank card.

> This means anyone can land in London and immediately ride public transit using their existing bank card.

*Anyone with a bank account. Or is this a less significant problem in the UK compared to the US?

There are transit systems that literally do not accept cash. The light rail trains, trolleys, and to some extent BRT all come to mind in Seattle.

The light rail and trolleys in Seattle do accept cash at Westlake and similar large stations. Busses do as well...

You cannot board the light rail (nor BRT) and present cash. You have to buy an Orca card first, which are available in various locations, but chiefly, none of those locations are inside the light rail or BRT.

Ticket vending machines, which sell both ORCA cards and fare tickets, are available at every light rail station.

For BRT, you can pay cash at the time of boarding.

You can buy an orca card for $5 and then add money on it at multiple places.

You can pay with cash at the ticket machines at all of the link stations, not just Westlake/large stations.

Seattleite here. This is false. You can pay for all of the services you named with cash.

You have to buy an Orca card with cash, then pay the fare with the Orca card. It's indirect, and any remaining balance isn't in your pocket. The point is: you can't pay cash at boarding.

No, you don't have to buy an ORCA card. You can buy a paper ticket for the exact fare at a ticket vending machine, which are available at every Link station.

You don't have to buy an ORCA card. The ticket machines dispense both paper tickets and ORCA cards. The ORCA cards cost $5, so most tourists opt for paper tickets instead.

You can pay with cash at all of the link stations. The ticket machines will take cash and dispense a paper ticket.

And you can totally pay cash on the RapidRide buses, you just have to board via the front door of the bus. (If you pay with an ORCA card you can board via the back door if you want to, but if you're paying cash you have to board normally).

You clearly don't travel much and try to navigate different public transit systems.

I travel domestically and internationally, and I always have cash - and it is almost always much more difficult than it should be to pay for public transit, just like the article says.

woosh

Most public transit riders in the U.S. don't travel much and don't try to navigate different public transit systems. This is not a problem that affects the real users of public transit in the U.S., and it's not what's holding back broader adoption of public transit.

I haven't touched a physical dollar bill in multiple years.

So? ATMs are everywhere. If you need to access transit in a pinch, you can just take out some cash. It's the universal fallback payment.

Most transit systems do not provide any change. So if you go to an ATM and get $20, then break it for a $2.00 fare, you lose $18.00. That's not a solution.

I bought a train ticket the other day from a vending machine. You put in a $20 and it spits out a ticket and your change. Systems that are incapable of doing this are designed poorly. That is not a shortcoming of cash or technology, it is a shortcoming of the transit operator.

That's not the only issue. Cash also slows down the system. If I shove my crumpled dollar bill into the machine it will slow down the whole route, adding cost for the agency. The agency then has to have staff to count the cash, then hire an armored car to take it to a bank. It's not that simple.

This is why you have tickets or transit tokens. You can buy one on the bus/train, but then it costs 30% more and so nobody does that. Then you can buy a token using any payment method you like, whenever you like. Buy them from a vending machine at the train station with cash, order a month's worth on your credit card and have them shipped to your home, whatever you prefer.

Dropping an exact value coin into a machine is a solved problem, is reliable, instantaneous, has automatic redundancy in high volume locations because there will be multiple machines, protects privacy, etc.

> The agency then has to have staff to count the cash, then hire an armored car to take it to a bank. It's not that simple.

That is not a significant cost. The service is paid a small amount of money to collect a much larger amount of money, and if you do more frequent pickups then less security is required and the ratio stays low.

Meanwhile with cash you don't have to deal with chargebacks, computer intrusions, processing fees, etc.

Parent comment is referring to a ticket vending machine external to the coach, not an on-coach bill acceptor. It does not slow down the route.

Have you ever taken a bus? Every bus I've ever taken doesn't give change, so it's not a matter of just getting a $20 bill from an ATM and being good to go. You have to have exact change (and often it's not an even dollar amount which is that much more of a pain).

Plus, people paying cash slow down the bus as they fumble for their wallets and count out their coins and such. If enough people pay cash, it slows down the bus significantly. We should be trying to get to the point where nobody pays cash when boarding buses for this reason alone.

> Plus, people paying cash slow down the bus as they fumble for their wallets and count out their coins and such.

Around here, on board the busses, they have completely automated machines that can read all the notes and dispense change automatically, they even seem pretty robust at it (crumpled bills, etc work fine) - they essentially as good a job as it's possible to do with cash.

And it still takes agonizingly longer than tapping a transit card and everyone else on the bus hates you.

Yes, I too love paying exorbitant fees for the privilege of taking money out of an ATM.

I pay $0 for debit transactions, but anywhere from $1 to $4 for an ATM withdrawal.

Use your bank's ATM then.

This is so practical.

You should switch banks or join a credit union.

Why? So I can take filthy money I never use out of an ATM I don't want to use?

Not ever carrying cash is just as much a defense measure as it is a practical measure, though also almost everything supports some form of electronic payments, be it in the form of plastic or phone.

Assuming you’re in the US, what do you do if you lose connectivity, like leaving an urban area? What’s your option if you break your phone?

what options would you suggest for the unbanked or those without smartphones?

Just because you haven’t handled actu al cash in a while doesn’t mean others haven’t. A large percentage of people still rely on cash transactions to get thru the day.

No offense, but have you heard of credit/debit/check cards? I rarely use my phone for payments unless I forget my wallet.

All I'm suggesting is that the "federal reserve note" is not as universal anymore. It's only practically useful if I have it.

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