Sir, – Your report on the Nation Transport Authority’s timeline for rolling out contactless payment (“Contactless payments for public transport ‘years away’, NTA chief says”, News, May 9th) is reminiscent of the old joke about the lost tourist asking for directions, where the response is “Well, I wouldn’t start from here.” Why, given that other cities implemented this technology years ago, are we apparently starting the countdown from now? As with other improvements that are widespread elsewhere (red light cameras and bus lane cameras come to mind), it seems that there’s an official inability to manage more than one thing at a time, with the result that good ideas often seem to remain sitting on somebody’s desk for years at a stretch. Clearly solutions like this are not cheap, and involve new IT infrastructure. But the fact that it’s all been done elsewhere, and the obvious benefits that it brings in terms of convenience and speed, should make prioritising it an easy choice. – Yours, etc,
DAVE MATHIESON,
Salthill,
Galway.