U.S.’s first smartphone rail ticketing service headed for Boston

[CHamilton]

U.S.’s first smartphone rail ticketing service headed for Boston

Boston rail commuters will soon have a mobile alternative to traditional paper tickets, allowing them to use their smartphones to buy and display their train tickets. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), which serves 1.3 million people a day, will launch the U.S.’s first smartphone rail ticketing system this fall through a partnership with Masabi, a London company which has been rolling out mobile ticketing services in the UK.

 

[MattW]

This is interesting, but I thought one of the rail systems under NJT was already doing something with smartphones, but with Near-Field Communication rather than QR codes.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

What percentage of currently active phones have NFC? 0.001%?

 

[CHamilton]

What percentage of currently active phones have NFC? 0.001%?

I couldn't find percentages, but a study from last month says there were 30 million NFC phones sold in 2011, and Deloitte is predicting 200 million sold by the end of this year, with 300 million more next year, and 700 million by 2016.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

What percentage of currently active phones have NFC? 0.001%?

I couldn't find percentages, but a study from last month says there were 30 million NFC phones sold in 2011, and Deloitte is predicting 200 million sold by the end of this year, with 300 million more next year, and 700 million by 2016.

The first link is apparently being hidden by AU's forum software. Here it is in a form people can actually see...

www.bgr.com/2012/03/26/shipments-of-nfc-enabled-handsets-reached-30-million-units-in-2011/

Unfortunately all that links to is a press release by "André Malm" working as a senior analyst at "Berg Insight" which is relayed without review or context by gossip blog Boy Genius Report.

I'm still looking over the Deloitte & Touche LLP article, which does not appear to agree with some of the source figures of the BGR press release, but predicts equally astounding adoption rates. Maybe this is mostly happening outside of the US since neither of these sources are involved directly with the US market.

 

[AlanB]

The first link is apparently being hidden by AU's forum software.

I'm not having problems with either link; and there is nothing in the software that should be blocking a link. In fact, links to bad sites still will show up and the staff have to go pull them down.

I'm not sure what problem you're having, but it's got to be something specific to your machine, unless maybe the website itself was having a problem at the moment you clicked on the link.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

The first link is apparently being hidden by AU's forum software.

I'm not having problems with either link; and there is nothing in the software that should be blocking a link. In fact, links to bad sites still will show up and the staff have to go pull them down. I'm not sure what problem you're having, but it's got to be something specific to your machine, unless maybe the website itself was having a problem at the moment you clicked on the link.

I cannot get the BGR link to show up. Tried different browsers. Tried logging out. No link, no underline, no nothing. The only reason I knew is was there was because I saw it in the reply window. This has happened several times to my own posts as well. One time PRR repeatedly edited one of my posts in order to get a link working.

 

[Ryan]

I'm seeing the same thing:

Edit:

Safari 5.1.1, OS X 10.7.3 here.

Edit2:

Same with Firefox 5.0.1 and 11.0 on OS X 10.7.3, and Firefox 7.0.1 on Win7, and Internet Explorer 6.0.1 on WinXP.

 

[AlanB]

The first link is apparently being hidden by AU's forum software.

I'm not having problems with either link; and there is nothing in the software that should be blocking a link. In fact, links to bad sites still will show up and the staff have to go pull them down. I'm not sure what problem you're having, but it's got to be something specific to your machine, unless maybe the website itself was having a problem at the moment you clicked on the link.

I cannot get the BGR link to show up. Tried different browsers. Tried logging out. No link, no underline, no nothing. The only reason I knew is was there was because I saw it in the reply window. This has happened several times to my own posts as well. One time PRR repeatedly edited one of my posts in order to get a link working.

Sorry, by first link I though you meant the one in the first post on the page. I never even realized that there were two links in his post. Still not sure what was wrong initially, but I had to cut out the link entirely and replace it, in order to fix it. My best guess is that there was some errant, hidden character that got into things and tripped up the software.

But again, I can assure you that the software doesn't intentionally hide links.

 

[Ryan]

Thanks for fixing it up. I wouldn't have known there was a link there had TS not mentioned it.

 

[CHamilton]

Massachusetts rail commuters can now use smartphones instead of tickets to ride

The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) just announced that passengers on some of its commuter rail trains can now purchase digital tickets straight from their Android and iOS smartphones, a new initiative that should greatly speed up the ticket-buying and ticket-checking process. The new MBTA mTicket app lets users buy a ticket that can display a digital bar code for conductors to scan once on-board —the agency says that it is the first public transit agency to move any of its system over to smartphone ticketing, though Amtrak has offered iPhone ticketing for a few months now.