Why do you need to do all that?
That would be a significant improvement over the current situation yes, many TOCs have sensibly done exactly that in recent years. But I'd probably a offer seat selection option for £5 to cater for those who request it (refundable if cancelled), it shouldn't be the default though.
Honestly, I don't think it's intentional. They don't seem to care enough to maintain the data properly.
It does already exist, smartcards, and that's without the inconvenience of PAYG
The user could have the choice of pay as you go or a smart card pre loaded ticket on all routes.
I think you highlight a good point here.
CCSTs are a recognised railway "brand": everyone recognises them as a train ticket.
Not where you can get Advances for suburban journeys at a significant discount.
For those size tickets, could you not do the full Aztec code , printed on the back, and the ticket details printed on the front. I guess the machines can only print easily on one side though, but would be more versatile than the receipt style ones, and could be fed into a scanning machine for quick processing, eliminating TfLs opposition
It could equally be argued that short journeys like Meadowhall - Sheffield, Burley Park - Leeds, etc shouldn't have Advance tickets available in the first place.
Out of interest where are those barcode CCST tickets issued? I regularly buy CCST tickets from ticket offices and ticket machines and onboard trains and i have never come across one. I have seen photos online but i have never found one in person. Is it just a trial at a couple of stations?
If I buy an e-ticket for a short journey in and around London, I get my Network Railcard discount. If I use PAYG, I don't.
Most of the things that you say are problems with PAYG could be solved such as split ticketing which in my opinion shouldn’t exist in the first place. Ticketing should probably be reformed before the PAYG system would be implemented.
Tickets allow things like Groupsave, Kids for a Quid, Two Together Railcards etc to exist.
Yes, tickets could fill the gaps that PAYG can’t cover, but most people don’t travel in groups. For the vast majority of passengers, PAYG would work fine.
Euston - if you specifically ask them, at the start of the transaction, to issue them on CCST rather than the bog roll format, they will.
As it does in London. The issues noted on this forum about using paper tickets at TfL gatelines is probably due to incompetence, but also due to inexperience - they rarely see tickets and the few they do are Travelcards.
E-tickets are real tickets.
ATB stands for Amalgamated Ticket and Boarding-pass. In airline use, the same stock could be used for either.
There is no "ink" on paper roll tickets; they are thermally printed.
You can load all of them edge cases , and advances on to smart cards though
Whether there is ink or not does not alter the fact that part of the print from this ticket came off and stuck to the clear plastic of the ticket wallet. This was around 8 years ago when the paper tickets were quite a new thing. Perhaps things have improved since then.
Split ticketing is essentially impossible to eliminate unless you have a flat mileage-based system with no off-peak or other time-based discounts.
Feel free to post any proposal you have to eliminae it, in the Speculative Discussion forum section. Feel free to link to the thread from here.
Feel free to post your proposals for how to solve it in a new thread, if it's that easy!
It's a mixed bag. Depends on the retailer. For instance, I recently switched from paper day Travelcards to GWR Smartcard, but then I bought a load of LNER vouchers for the Amex cashback.
