EDSA Busway Ticketing - Echoes from the Past

Make absolutely sure you understand whether an AFCS has actually mandated by the government. Look into the future, and put yourself in the shoes of a company that has invested a lot of money based on what they believed to be an enforceable mandate. From this point of view, read the press releases, department orders and other statements again and ask yourself whether any of this would hold up in court.

When you read the government statements, look for enforcement mechanisms. Ask whether these mechanisms actually exist in writing. Find articles and official documents from the time the Jeepney modernization project was announced and compare the statements from the past with the current statements.

I am sure you will find that what sounded like a solid plan on which the public transport and AFCS industry can rely on for their investment decisions, turns out to be full of unenforceable aspirations. And even if the plan was solid, it was completely unrealistic and eventually ignored.

Tiny Filipinas who have been waiting in the dark and heat for an hour to get on a bus are a force to reckon with, and can do more damage to a bus validator than a body builder with a sledgehammer.

The environment is unbelievably hostile, and the bus driver or conductors are not your allies protecting your equipment.

External cable connections must be so tough that you could tow the bus with it in a pinch. And the casing of your device must be able to withstand a bus rolling over it - repeatedly.

Make sure the electrical connections of your validator within the bus are done by bus operator personnel. Some of teh buses are a bit dodgy and you do noit want to be the one holding the can when one of them goes up in flames. Documentation with lots of names and signatures are key!

Of course the validator must work under all conditions, and it must do so very fast. Take into account that no amount of signage will prevent passengers tapping the card in the wrong place or holding the QR code at an angle at which no camera could recognize it. You better plan and budget for somebody to stand next to bus who will help passengers to find the big sign "TAP HERE", and to hold their card to the reader for a bit longer than a millisecond.

Validators that require any amount of intervention by the driver will fail. Even the simple act of switching it off before stopping the engine will be too much. Validators that cannot determine the current stop with absolute certainty every time, either with GPS or a beacon, are a waste of time and a recipe for the failure of the whole project.

Validators must be able to run long enough on internal battery power to reliably upload transactions and download configuration and stop list files. Don’t be tenpted to buy some cheap 2G stuff from China. LTE or even better 5G are a must.

In most cities around the world, you will find one bus operator with one bus model (or bus manufacturer). City buses in Manila on the other hand are a hotchpotch of coach buses that were never intended for use as a city bus.

Be prepared for every bus to be different. There will be no mounting solution for your bus validators that works consistently in all buses, not even for all buses of one single operator.

Take into account that the same bus is not always operated by the same bus operator. I believe the department of transport mandates that buses must be assigned to one operator and one route, but in reality that is rarely enforced. Operators borrow buses from each other or deploy buses on other routes, meaning that your expensive bus validator might end up on a bus that is getting a bunch of school children to their science excursion. Incidentally that might also be one of the reasons why fllet management and vehicle tracking has been mandated for years but never caught on.

That practice also raises the question of configuring a validator for the correct operator, which in turn will determine who will receive the fare intake. Getting the clearing and settlement wrong is the absolute worse scenario and will bring the project to a standstill very quickly.

Over the years, drivers, conductors and bus operators have developed a finely tuned system of "revenue allocation".

Bus operators like to talk about "shrinkage", which is ticketing revenue that staff is withholding from the operator. This sounds bad, but the reality is, that the "shrinkage" is an integral part of staff compensation which is offset by the measly salaries paid by the operator.

Introducing an AFCS is upsetting the balance. Not only is there less opportunity for "shrinkage", there is also the problem of changing the salaries to make up for the shortfall.

None of this is even taking into account the prospect of staff reduction. If, for the transition period, your project depends on existing staff, who already knows that they will lose their job, then you should expect active sabotage of your project.

Without a complete redesign of the business model, staff will beat any AFCS into submission. Bus drivers will refuse to operate the bus validator. They will "forget" to switch on the device, claim that it did not work, rip out cables, or actively badmouth the system when passengers ask for help.