Datafare 2000 ticket Question

[Albatross]

Recently I was on a Ballina Buslines bus, and when I looked at the ticket I noticed some numbers which I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on the meaning of.

The ticket says

FROM 09 BALLINA
TO 25 ALSTONVILLE
Then there is
06:59 [when the ticket was purchased-I assume in 24 hour time] then 661B [the route number of the service] and 05JAN10 [self explanatory]
The below it is
0044 00002309 0001
What do these numbers mean? I was the first person to get on the bus that day, so I assume that 0001 means I am passenger 0001 [or more accurately the first pax to buy a ticket?] The other two I have no idea on...

Also as for sections... Ballina is section 09, Alstonville is 25. IIRC "Brockley" is 23 [Brockley is towards Lismore-eg it must count 09, 25, 23, and on to 1 in Lismore. Before you go looking on your maps there is no place called Brockley-its the name of a plantation there that they used as a section name...] . How does the machine understand the numbers increasing and then decreasing?

Thanks
Alex

[Andrew]

The numebr COULD be a combination of 3 of these - ticket machine number, driver's card number, ticket number, shift number, bus registration number or fleet number - or none of the above!! I am not really sure....

[Grenda Driver]

Our Datafare machines have the first numbers as the validator/machine ID, and the 2nd part is the ticket number.

[Two-Way]

If the Datafares are set up the same everywhere, the driver changes the region/zone/section his/herself. Either that, or the driver enters in the highest zone/region/section to the lowest zone/region/section then hits print.

[Ken]

If the Datafares are set up the same everywhere

They aren't. They're actually quite 'dumb' machines but the way they are set up defines how they can be used.

Most companies have them set up so the driver types in the number of sections the passenger is travelling and the ticket (and drivers display on the machine) indicate the section number (and optionally name) of where the ticket is valid to. Section numbers normally went 1,2,3, etc.

Other operators have unique numbers for each section over their entire network (North & Western in Sydney and Rutty's in Wollongong used to do this). The driver would type in the section number for your destination which would print on the ticket with the correct price. Section numbers for each route could be in any sequence - e.g. 1, 2, 25, 26, 13, 4. This method had the advantage of automatically calculating the correct price and printing the correct destination on your ticket where 'transfer' tickets were sold which enabled you to change buses to complete your journey but only buy one ticket; also for where multiple routes operate from point A to point B via different routes with a different number of sections - the passenger is only charged the number of sections for the direct route even if they have to travel a longer length route (e.g. Westbus used to (not sure if they still do) only charge the direct fare from Parramatta to Castle Hill regardless of whether you caught the direct route 600 or the longer 604/606 etc routes).

A piece of trivia is how North & Western decided on their section numbers for their entire network - they created a list of all the sections then put them in alphabetical order and numbered them from 1 onwards. Chatswood would be something like 23 and Parramatta something like 109.

Drivers always manually scroll the current section they are in, regardless of which way they had them programmed. The only time drivers didn't scroll through the sections is where the company didn't actually use sections and just required the driver to manually calculate the number of sections a passenger's journey entailed.

The row of numbers probably are:
1) ticket machine number or bus rego/fleet number
2) most likely the number of the drivers card for the ticket machine
3) ticket number (resets to 0 for each trip)