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Comment by ldjb | Hacker News Reader

Private companies can, to a large extent, target and accommodate only a subset of the market.

However, a public transport system has to be for everyone. There are legal and political consequences to making it difficult or impossible for certain demographics to use public transport. There's also the fact that the most marginalised in our society are often incredibly reliant on public transport. That's why TfL and other public bodies have to undertake an Equality Impact Assessment for any policy change and take these things very seriously.

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The removal of cash from buses seems (as mentioned in the article) to be a similar change. I wonder what the Equality Impact Assessment outcome was for that. Although that is less severe than removing cash as an option via removing Oyster cards entirely, as a homeless person could still reasonably use cash to top up an Oyster card and use that for the bus, instead of a contactless card - which I think a fixed address is required for?)

Buses going cashless was fully consulted upon. See the FAQs for the output of the EqIA:

https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/buses/cashless/

You're right that contactless cards usually require a fixed address, although some banks allow you to use any address you can receive post at (e.g. a friend's address).

>Private companies can, to a large extent, target and accommodate only a subset of the market.

I absolutely agree. Except these private company were publicly advocating to abolish physical cash and top up card. Pushing their narrative towards a future which everything goes through Smartphone where the company have a strategic interest in doing so. While proclaiming themselves as the guardian of privacy and protector of their users.

This isn't the first time the subject of dropping Oyster card or any Top Up card payment in any part of the world has come up. Last time ( if I remember correctly it was 2016, roughly during the launch of Android Pay on Tfl or something like that, thinking about it now it might have been a PR piece ) there were people in the general public who really believe the future is cashless and all in Smartphone. And the general narrative at the time was dropping Oyster card some time in the future was inevitable because Tfl and other Transport companies around the world doesn't want the burden of running their own payment system in other to save cost. And if I remember correctly the answer Tfl gave at the time wasn't as clear cut as it is now.

So I am extremely happy to read a firm stand from Tfl on this issue.

This is why I roll my eyes anytime someone wants to "run government like a business". Government fundamentally must serve everyone, covering all the messy edge cases like unbanked people, and people who don't speak the native language.

Businesses look for efficiencies and that often means limiting their services to specific groups or requiring many prerequisites (either stated or implied). Government doesn't have that luxury and therefore has to be some level of inefficient. That doesn't stop government from offering modern internet-based services, it just means they have to keep the fallback process as well. For example, I can do my annual license plate renewal online with a credit card from the comfort of my home. If I don't have a credit card I can also go down to the ministry of transport office and pay in cash. A business could easily decide having physical offices all over the province is grossly expensive and make a switch to online payments only. Government doesn't (and shouldn't) have that option.

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