Self scanned seat tickets on trains

[J663738]

Might be a bit silly, but the guard wandering around scanning individual tickets is so time consuming and last century!!
Especially for long distance trains.
Could you not just scan your ticket (and railcard) by your seat and light above goes green.
Conductor walks down train looking for any non green seats. Change seats, old seat goes red and new one goes green.
Might put a stop to short fares and doughnutting

if everything is electronic, the practice of physically checking tickets seem very out dated.

 

[jfollows]

So what does the green light mean, for example a seat which isn’t reserved, which is useful to passengers?

 

[Gaelan]

Deutsche Bahn's "Komfort Check-in" is similar to what you're describing, although it's done via their mobile app - it only works for tickets you've purchased online from DB - rather than any scanner by the seat. I suspect installing (and maintaining!) barcode scanners at each seat would be prohibitively expensive.

 

[J663738]

So what does the green light mean, for example a seat which isn’t reserved, which is useful to passengers?

No it means the person sat there has a valid ticket (at that point in their journey)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jul 2025 ==

Deutsche Bahn's "Komfort Check-in" is similar to what you're describing, although it's done via their mobile app - it only works for tickets you've purchased online from DB - rather than any scanner by the seat. I suspect installing (and maintaining!) barcode scanners at each seat would be prohibitively expensive.

Ok, yes you just scan a seat barcode on your phone maybe, which lights the indicator??

 

[Gaelan]

Ok, yes you just scan a seat barcode on your phone maybe, which lights the indicator??

I've never used it, but I think you just enter the seat number. The "indicator" is something on the device the conductor carries rather than anything passenger-visible.