Apparently it’s a big job. Can’t say I understand it but I can accept that as fact. The leap card is a grand yoke. I think they should advertise it more.
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Would you not just add the contactless payment system to every Luas stop, bus, etc along with the current Leap system. Then remove the Leap system after a certain period: 6 months, year,…
Any unused balances on Leap cards could be refunded at retailers.
Give out new contactless cards for pensioners, Taxsavers.
No merging of the Leap card and contactless systems as merging systems would only complicate things.
The contactless system should be easy to copy from other countries.
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The Leap card is very good and topping it up using your phone works very well. Shame it can’t be added to my phone wallet and used like other cards.
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It’s very handy
As I said, I don’t know anything about it but I recall reading that it’s a much bigger undertaking you might imagine.
I’d imagine that’s TII spin for why they are a decade behind. Sure every horsebox in the country selling coffee has gone contactless.
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They’re not a decade behind though. There’s been quite a few systems with it going live in the last 12 months so they are behind but London is an outlier in terms of how long they’ve had it. And even then, they’re only expanding it to suburbs in phases.
Can’t be that big. They brought it into the Manchester one in a few weeks once people complained about the initial stupid system where you’d be desperately trying to buy a ticket as the tram appeared and it anything up to 12 minutes til the next one.
Awful easy to forget to tap.out though.
Of course they are a decade behind. London had it half a generation ago.
They clearly didn’t. You didn’t have integrated ticketing until a couple of months ago. Sounds like they did the projects back to front which works out quite well now but you didn’t have a Leap Card like Travel 90 system like Dublin for a long period.
You keep making things up tim. Good man. 
That very much appears to be the case
Making transport an easy option
Sir, – I have family in Dublin and visit regularly. I’ve always been surprised that the transport system does not accept contactless payment.
I then read that it will take five years – yes, that is correct, five years – to introduce a system that London introduced in a two-year period over a decade ago (“Dublin transport contactless payments delayed until 2029,” June 26th).
I live in Oxford and here we have had contactless for seven years. It took 18 months to introduce. I also have family in Belfast. They have contactless payment for public transport – it took less than two years to introduce.
Why is Dublin so incompetent? London has much higher levels of complexity and scale. Belfast does not have the resources as we are continually told by those comparing the much richer South. Yet they were able to manage the project in a timely fashion.
What is going on? Is this another children’s hospital fiasco with the potential for rising costs and no proper programme management?Why has Dublin not used Flowbird as in Belfast or other suppliers who can deliver a timely system?
And why does the Government not have a joined-up strategy to have contactless payment across all major urban centres in Ireland and thus get economies of scale and cost-savings?
This is just another indicator of Ireland’s inability to develop infrastructure at scale and speed which the citizens deserve. – Yours, etc,
Dr MARC THOMPSON,
Oxford,
England.
Sir, – I am currently in Corfu where having used their public buses you can pay by bus pass, cash and contactless payments.
The Government is doing its darnest to get people out of cars and yet they are not making it easy for customers to choose alternative methods of transport, which is the key in getting them to use them.
Greece, a country with far fewer resources than Ireland, can manage what we can’t for another four years. It is mind boggling. – Yours, etc,
NIAMH BYRNE,
Fairview,
Dublin 3.
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Paddy needs to hand the implementation over to some Big 4 consultancy to get it over the line
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A sum up machine with a SIM card stuck to the wall
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At least now that they have a deadline we can, at least, be certain it’ll be in by then
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Bus driving keying in the individual fares at each stop & then waving the machine above his head to catch a signal.
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In the last month I’ve had reason to use Dublin bus on a few occasions:
- I went running for a bus parked at a stop on Manor St till the driver told me to ‘chill out, we won’t be leaving for a while’. I asked was the bus broken down. He replies ‘No bud, I’m ahead of me time. There wasn’t enough people at stops so I need to hang on until the timetable catches up with me’ We pull off 5 minutes later.
- a bus stopped at Aston Quay to change drivers. A 10 minute wait as the two boys had a smoke and a chat till the new driver jumped on and started into the now traffic laden south quays
- A load of Japanese tourists tried to get on the bus at Burgh quay. No change only notes and cards and couldn’t understand why they couldn’t get on. A Dublin mother sitting with her child in the buggy section got up and paid for them all with change in her purse and explained the scenario in her best Drimnagh English as the driver wasn’t budging.
What a day(s), what a city.
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@Little_Lord_Fauntleroy why is Dublin bus still operating in the stone age?
Is there a Dublin Bus route map online ?