Idea:Colour of tickets

[Simon11]

Hi

I'm sure many of us has experienced, when you purchase tickets with reservations and get handed 5 or even more when your purchasing tickets for friends/family.

Its always a challenge to work out what ticket the guard wants to see

Why not therefore start with a simple colour scheme?

All the tickets are orange.

Why not have the ticket the guard wants to see in orange,
Reservations in yellow
Receipts in green

I've just picked the colours out of the sky, so might be a better colour scheme. What would be the problems with this idea?

I can see that you'd need to stack different colour tickets which would increase the costs and require machines to be modified.

However the benefits are:
The passenger understands better what these thousands of ticket actually mean
The guard being able to check train tickets quicker

Whats your views?

 

[Zoe]

There did actually used to be different colours used. I remember at least orange for standard tickets, blue for reservations, white for advance fares (later dark blue) and black for season tickets.

 

[jopsuk]

It's a lot easier for the machines (TVMs, those at ticket windows and especially portable ones) to have a single stock.

 

[island]

Iarnród Éireann does that for its tickets issued from ticket offices. The ticket clerk then has to feed the right stock in for each sale. Guards carry their Crouzet ticket machine in a special bag with storage room for nine different types of stock. However, vending machines print onto common stock.

I don't think this is a viable solution for the UK. Ticket vending machines have one (or at most two) roll/stack of ticket stock loaded. You've already specified three different colours. You can't have rolls of stock that alternate orange/yellow/orange/yellow/etc. as not every passenger will be having a reservation. In the same way, ticket office machines which currently feed from rolls or stacks of stock will need to be overhauled, or alternatively stock fed in manually (like in APTIS days). And they already print receipts onto normal thermal rolls.

Finally, the guard will want to see the reservation when you have an advance but won't care when you're using a walk-up ticket. So passengers may not be any clearer!

I don't disagree that some solution to either reduce the number of coupons tickets print onto, or distinguish between "you need to keep this" tickets and "not so important". Some lessons could be learned from Irish Rail here — an advance return from Cork to Galway will print on a single coupon despite that you will be using anything up to four trains each way.

 

[exile]

Last year I bought a DB special London-Berlin return ticket - covering 3 legs of journey each way- for 2 people. This was ONE TICKET.

 

[Minilad]

Anyone remember when Rover tickets used to be a folded card with with expiry date stamped on the front. If the issuing clerk had a brain freeze it was possible to have one valid for 8 days as the start date didn't appear on the ticket
White card with red writing if I remember correctly

 

[trainophile]

What's the point of TVMs churning out a "collection receipt" with AP tickets? It says "Please retain for your records" but doesn't seem to have anything useful on it that isn't covered by the ticket itself.

 

[island]

They give those out when you collect any ticket at all. I suppose as it's the last ticket it makes you sure you've got all the coupons you need (something I very nearly screwed up on when, just after moving over to the UK, I collected two return advances for two people and took the first four coupons that came out and walked away from the machine, not realising that advances printed as two coupons or more per leg!)

 

[lyesbkz]

What's the point of TVMs churning out a "collection receipt" with AP tickets? It says "Please retain for your records" but doesn't seem to have anything useful on it that isn't covered by the ticket itself.

When the TVM at Newcastle refused to print my EC Catering Voucher, the collection receipt showed how many coupons had printed successfully and therefore the staff knew I hadn't already received one (they did seem a bit suspicious at first until I pointed out the numbers!)

 

[tony_mac]

Last year I bought a DB special London-Berlin return ticket - covering 3 legs of journey each way- for 2 people. This was ONE TICKET.

I had some problems with a DB special ticket because it did not show all the booked trains on the ticket.

The guard on my first leg told me that my ticket was not valid, as I was on the wrong service; the ticket only showed the service number starting with the next connection on my journey.

Luckily I had paid for reservations and not detached the ticket from the letter which showed them. He obviously still wasn't happy with it but gave up eventually; I was obviously quite adamant that I was on the correct train!

 

[bse35]

At Hexham ticket office, the very helpful man in the office put all 4 of us travelling on the same ticket, much more efficient.

 

[SS4]

Isn't this overkill? I wonder what proportion of tickets are used correctly with the immense handicap of only one type of stock?

 

[Flying Snail]

Isn't this overkill?

Possibly although it would have it's uses.

Certainly if advances in particular had a different colour it would make it easier for passengers to understand the need to ensure they board the correct train.

A simple PA message at large stations such as "all passengers with blue tickets are reminded that their tickets are valid on the booked train only, anyone unsure which train they are booked on should seek assistance from staff before travelling" would weed out more of the dozys that end up boarding incorrect trains under the impression that they will be let away with it.

It is a moot point at this stage though as the modern ticket issuing systems are set up to deal with one type of stock only and modifying them all would be a massive task now.

 

[flymo]

Anyone remember when Rover tickets used to be a folded card with with expiry date stamped on the front. If the issuing clerk had a brain freeze it was possible to have one valid for 8 days as the start date didn't appear on the ticket
White card with red writing if I remember correctly

Sadly, yes I do.
Regarding the all line rover, didn't they also have a corner cut off if they were only for 7 days and not cut off for 14 days.

In the past I've had rovers on purple stock and grey stock too.

 

[table38]

Anyone remember when Rover tickets used to be a folded card with with expiry date stamped on the front. If the issuing clerk had a brain freeze it was possible to have one valid for 8 days as the start date didn't appear on the ticket
White card with red writing if I remember correctly

Oh yes Now if we re-adopted this format, you could have the ticket on one half, and the reservation on the other...

 

[island]

Shouldn't that be 28 JLY 1974?

 

[BlythPower]

It's a good old fashioned 1970s rubber stamped date not an APTIS machine's print!

I'd love one of those Rovers now - especially at that price.

 

[mallard]

At Hexham ticket office, the very helpful man in the office put all 4 of us travelling on the same ticket, much more efficient.

I've been issued an "Adult: TWO" ticket when travelling with a friend before, it's a right pain at barriered stations!

 

[BestWestern]

I've been issued an "Adult: TWO" ticket when travelling with a friend before, it's a right pain at barriered stations!

I agree it can be a pain where you need to pass through barriers, so I always advise people with tickets like this to speak to the barrier staff rather than put the tickets through. Issuing multiple passengers on one ticket saves waste, and it's particularly helpful with things like GroupSave, whereby the group need to travel together; in this case I will ask first if they are staying together, and then issue it all on the one ticket as a matter of course, which prevents misuse of the discounted fare; I don't offer a choice in that case.

As for the original suggestion, I would agree that in principle different coloured coupons would be very helpful. It's only when you've checked tickets on routes with a high volume of advance purchase fares that you realise just how much confusion there is over which tickets to present. A good 50% of people will offer up their seating reservation on it's own, thinking that this is their travel ticket. On a busy train full of occasional travellers on AP tickets, a ticket sweep can end up taking twice as long as it ought to, simply because of the time it takes everybody to fumble about for the right tickets!

Even if differing ticket stock colours isn't possible, just the words ' THIS IS YOUR / TRAVEL TICKET ' written on the orange strips at the top and bottom of the actual ticket, would be useful as an interim measure. We also need to enclose an advice leaflet explaining what everything is inside the envelope where tickets are sent through the post. However, in typical railway style, what seems a perfectly sensible suggestion will become a complete impossibility due to the 'technical' issues, namely modifying TVM's and so on :roll: :roll:

 

[bb21]

I've been issued an "Adult: TWO" ticket when travelling with a friend before, it's a right pain at barriered stations!

I have only had multiple people issued on the same ticket once. That was at Paisley Gilmour Street from a SPORTIS machine. The barrier staff specifically asked if we were travelling together and if it was OK to issue both on one ticket.