Taxi Driver Online

Does anyone know of a meter that will double up as a bus ticket issuing agency?

want it for taxibuses and through ticketing.

That rather depends on who you are subsidised by. Our County Council demands full ETMs. If you ring your County or Unitary Council, they should give you a list of approved suppliers.

If its just for your own use, most of the later meters will link to a printer which can output tickets to your choice of design. You have to pay em a bit for the software etc. I think the Digitax F1, and the Halda M12 can both be programmed in this mode.

However... (there's always a however)...

What you may actually require, are split tariff meters, which show a separate fare for each customer. Aquillla did produce these for a time back in the 1980s after the 85 de-reg promoted their use.

We used those split tariff meters for a while, but then had so many of our drivers taken into hospital for serious mental dissorders that we had to stop using them, or instead, only employ drivers with more than one brain cell.

Life did get rather complicated with these meters, and the more so for the passengers who never had a clue what they would be paying for their fare, as it all depended on a division of the total number of passengers over various mileages.

Personally, I found it great fun, but gave it all up when Gameboy brought out Tetras. We just ran that on the meters instead. The passengers understood Tetras much easier.

Personally, I thought they were a good idea, but they were just unable to break into the mind-set of the average cabby and passenger alike.

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There is Significant Unmet Demand for my Opinion.

Well in fact the subsidising agency want me to find a supplier if I can

they are prepared to loan me wayfarer machines, but want a meter ticket if I can.

I can just imagine you going up and down the bus with your machine.

Oh for a picture.

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IDFIMH

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ok, send me your address, it will be done.

Isn't the Wayfarer is a static machine Uncle Suss?. Wired into the vehicle cradle.

If they will lend em to you, surely thats got to be your cheapest option?

Our Council require all the ticket info supplied to them direct from the ETM in a particular communications protocol. If you use a meter instead, you will probably find it necessary to have one that will download to an excell spreadsheet so that your council can pick-up the passenger data. There was such a package on the Digitax stand at Sandown Park I think. Tom Thumb uses DIgitax F1's and downloads his data I think. Ask him what the software is like. Over to you Tom.

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There is Significant Unmet Demand for my Opinion.

got to say dont understand this stuff, surely one could have tickets on a board and count the counterfoils?

by the way the PTA will pay for the meter ticket machine too.

Your PTA might pay for the ticket machines. Our County Council won't. Well, not directly, that is.

As for counting counterfoils, you would stand no chance on a tender for that in our area. It is insisted upon in the contracts that you must have electronic ticket machines that download data in a secure format that the operator cannot alter (or more specifically, alterations must also be recorded). While you can submit an Excell spreadsheet to the council with the results, that aint good enough for audit purposes, and they DEMAND access to the raw data from the ETMs.

One must chuckle a bit here, as this also infers that the bus companies do not have any better reputation for honesty than us `cab' operators.

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There is Significant Unmet Demand for my Opinion.