New Ticket Design Launched

[DeeGee]

The above looks *terrible*. Was this not tested? If it was, the testing was inadequate.

A small point - "under 16 year old" may be ambiguous. I'd go for "15 year old or younger", or "age below 16th birthday".

"under 16 year old" is not *that* ambiguous. Simple question - is your age under 16? Answer if 15 - Yes, answer if 16 - No. Even better, however, would be "birthday before dd/mm/yy", so the TM/Guard/RPI could easily cross-reference the ticket with ID.

Not entirely related to this, but it's "over 5" that gets my goat at the minute. My boy is 5 and a half. Does that make him 5, or over 5?

 

[jkdd77]

"under 16 year old" is not *that* ambiguous. Simple question - is your age under 16? Answer if 15 - Yes, answer if 16 - No. Even better, however, would be "birthday before dd/mm/yy", so the TM/Guard/RPI could easily cross-reference the ticket with ID.

Not entirely related to this, but it's "over 5" that gets my goat at the minute. My boy is 5 and a half. Does that make him 5, or over 5?

To complicate matters, there are a few circumstances in which 16 and 17 year olds may legitimately travel on a 'child' ticket, and printing 'under 16' on the ticket may be misleading and unhelpful in this context- e.g.:
1) if a 16-year old passenger is using a valid season ticket issued before his/ her 16th birthday (subject to the restriction that no such child ticket may run for more than four months after the 16th birthday);
2) if a 16 or 17-year-old passenger is travelling with an adult on a valid 'Family & Friends railcard issued before his or her 16th birthday, or;
3) if a 16 or 17-year-old passenger is travelling with an educational institution on certain 'Groupsave' tickets with certain TOCs;

 

[Bletchleyite]

To complicate matters, there are a few circumstances in which 16 and 17 year olds may legitimately travel on a 'child' ticket, and printing 'under 16' on the ticket may be misleading and unhelpful in this context- e.g.:
1) if a 16-year old passenger is using a valid season ticket issued before his/ her 16th birthday (subject to the restriction that no such child ticket may run for more than four months after the 16th birthday);
2) if a 16 or 17-year-old passenger is travelling with an adult on a valid 'Family & Friends railcard issued before his or her 16th birthday, or;

I'll get shouted at here for being anti-passenger, but I'd abolish those loopholes. They are pointlessly confusing.

3) if a 16 or 17-year-old passenger is travelling with an educational institution on certain 'Groupsave' tickets with certain TOCs;

Those who kept old GroupSave, I guess? New GroupSave doesn't offer discounted child tickets.

 

[cool110]

Those who kept old GroupSave, I guess? New GroupSave doesn't offer discounted child tickets.

The scheme for groups of 10 or more passengers that the rule applies is something different that isn't called GroupSave and is offered by some TOCs that don't do GroupSave.

 

[crehld]

A small point - "under 16 year old" may be ambiguous. I'd go for "15 year old or younger", or "age below 16th birthday".

I fail to see the ambiguity personally.

 

[theshillito]

Seems that some Arriva ticket machines have started moving over to the new design as a mate of mine got a ticket from Swansea to Cheltenham Spa in the new design.

 

[jon0844]

Hasn't it already happened? Remember seeing a thread a while back about someone being accused of ticket fraud!

You'd assume a real fraudster wouldn't create a ticket that bad!

 

[island]

I do wonder why they didn't use the move to "new GroupSave" to simply issue one ticket (or two for a return) for the entire group.

 

[andrewkeith5]

New layout tickets from Scheidt & Bachmann machines (the type used at Hereford, among other places) are very poorly laid out indeed. There are a lot of problems with double-printing, cut-off data and overlapping. The one I've illustrated here (issued at Kensington Olympia, machine 2272) even has three things superimposed! The Railcard text ("with Two Together Railc" [sic]) is printed over the validity information, as referred to above by trainophile, and the "Maltese Cross" marker is hidden in there as well. And look how small the date is (below "Kensington Olympia"), and how it is buried in the wall of text!

There are all sorts of inconsistencies in station names as well: some have hyphens and some don't, some are abbreviated unnecessarily, and the attached ticket to Shepherds Bush shows that Box Hill & Westhumble has reverted to its old incorrect spelling!

They desperately, desperately need to upgrade those machines to use a variable width font.

Not only are fixed-width fonts harder to read, they are also more than likely the reason for this.

Also, what happened to the space for the barcode? Pretty sure it use to be the case that the railcard was marked on the ticket as part of the "valid for one journey.." sentence, not separately on it's own...

Gist of the matter being that S&B machines still live up to their name really...

Edit: Another thing - it's an advance ticket, and the date is printed with the reservation - why not lose the pointless date at the top and put the railcard info there?

 

[cool110]

I do wonder why they didn't use the move to "new GroupSave" to simply issue one ticket (or two for a return) for the entire group.

It's always been an option to issue them like that, but issuing them separately seems to be more popular. Up here where we don't have GroupSave but do have Northern Duo I've gotten them in both ways (ToD collection was 1 ticket, ticket office was 2).

 

[Bletchleyite]

I do wonder why they didn't use the move to "new GroupSave" to simply issue one ticket (or two for a return) for the entire group.

Two words - "ticket barriers", I expect.

 

[jon0844]

It's not actually that bad an idea to make groups travel on one ticket and use the manual gate to be 'checked off'. Groups would generally be happy to stick together anyway.

You could even be more lenient with anyone dropping out of the group, knowing they'd need to buy a new ticket if travelling later.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's not actually that bad an idea to make groups travel on one ticket and use the manual gate to be 'checked off'. Groups would generally be happy to stick together anyway.

You could even be more lenient with anyone dropping out of the group, knowing they'd need to buy a new ticket if travelling later.

There isn't in practice an issue with anyone dropping out of a GroupSave group now provided it doesn't reduce the group travelling together below 3 (the minimum to invoke the discount). Personally I think it should be permitted for 2 or 1 to travel like that (or one person on a Two Together Railcard ticket pair) provided all relevant tickets are held.

 

[MikeWh]

To complicate matters, there are a few circumstances in which 16 and 17 year olds may legitimately travel on a 'child' ticket, and printing 'under 16' on the ticket may be misleading and unhelpful in this context- e.g.:
1) if a 16-year old passenger is using a valid season ticket issued before his/ her 16th birthday (subject to the restriction that no such child ticket may run for more than four months after the 16th birthday);
2) if a 16 or 17-year-old passenger is travelling with an adult on a valid 'Family & Friends railcard issued before his or her 16th birthday, or;

I'll get shouted at here for being anti-passenger, but I'd abolish those loopholes. They are pointlessly confusing.

I won't shout, but I will explain the valid reasoning behind them.
1) For the season ticket it allows a pupil to buy a ticket for the whole term even if their birthday falls part way through. If it didn't happen then many pupils would have to buy weekly or daily tickets where their birthday fell within a month of the start or end of term. You may need to be a parent to understand.
2) If this wasn't allowed then sales of F&F railcards, and the potential additional travel (versus a car) would decrease. Unless you want to introduce pro-rated reduced period railcards?

 

[tony_mac]

Seeing as 90% of 16 year-olds are in full-time education these days, I don't see why the age shouldn't be extended.
Many parents have a full year of legally having to send their children to school, but also having to pay adult prices to do so.
Obviously, it's not going to happen.

 

[jon0844]

In Sweden (or at least Skane), they've made child rate up to 20, the idea being that it will encourage youngsters to use public transport and potentially lessen the desire to start driving, or drive less. Seems to have made an impact, with suggestions it has helped reduce accidents involving young drivers.

Perhaps 17 or 18 would be a good idea to try out here? Then work from there.

 

[Bletchleyite]

We have the YP Railcard to do that, though. Issue would be funding I guess. Perhaps a balance might be to increase the YP discount to 50%.

 

[JaJaWa]

In Sweden (or at least Skane), they've made child rate up to 20, the idea being that it will encourage youngsters to use public transport and potentially lessen the desire to start driving, or drive less. Seems to have made an impact, with suggestions it has helped reduce accidents involving young drivers.

Perhaps 17 or 18 would be a good idea to try out here? Then work from there.

Reading Buses launched something similar here a couple of years ago. Under 19s can get a whole day ticket for £2.40 or any single for £1.40 with no ID necessary.

 

[Mojo]

In Sweden (or at least Skane), they've made child rate up to 20, the idea being that it will encourage youngsters to use public transport and potentially lessen the desire to start driving, or drive less. Seems to have made an impact, with suggestions it has helped reduce accidents involving young drivers.

Perhaps 17 or 18 would be a good idea to try out here? Then work from there.

I believe that was also the intention, and research has shown to be the case, with regards to offering under 16s (and under 18s in fulltime education) free bus travel in London.

 

[infobleep]

I believe that was also the intention, and research has shown to be the case, with regards to offering under 16s (and under 18s in fulltime education) free bus travel in London.

If they could afford to expand the scheme, keeping the costs at child rate on the National Rail network then I think it would be a good idea.

Clearly they have made aged to afford to so it in London but London has so many more people travelling that it probably offsets the loss in revenue.

 

[SickyNicky]

We have the YP Railcard to do that, though. Issue would be funding I guess. Perhaps a balance might be to increase the YP discount to 50%.

Back when I was eligible for a Young Person's Railcard, the discount was 50% on Off-Peak Day Returns (I seem to recall they were called that in those days) and 34% on Savers/Supersavers.

Of course, it meant that we would split tickets even more.

 

[Starmill]

It's an excellent idea. I haven't been entitled to any free bus travel since I was 5 or young enough to be carried. Consequently, I didn't use many buses except for going to school, which I soon also ditched. I'm not the sort of person who'd give up on local transport, so I haven't, but most of the other people I grew up with who can afford to clearly have. The problem is in Sweden they actually care about having people not using their cars. The UK Government doesn't seem fussed.

 

[cool110]

The problem is in Sweden they actually care about having people not using their cars. The UK Government doesn't seem fussed.

Call me cynical, but the real problem is that while the government says that car usage should be reduced to appear green, they actually want people to use their cars so that they pay more fuel duty.

 

[Mojo]

I wonder how long until someone gets grief from revenue staff or simply gets delayed because they produce a ticket like this?

I was questioned by the gateline attendant at Bradford Interchange last week because my ticket (new format) had the station listed as "Bardford Interchange."

 

[SickyNicky]

Here's two tickets issued at the Hereford machine.

For the benefit of those who can't see the image, it's one ticket including the reservation details, which tell us that the 05:28 from Hereford to Paddington is run by an "Unknown TOC".

Also, the validity text is overprinted with the railcard name, making neither readable.

Finally, the text is so small (and uses mixed case, which doesn't help) that I've had complaints from some visually imparied people, who could read the old style tickets but cannot read these.

 

[jon0844]

All that work wasted, with overlapping text and still no sense like 'Unknown TOC'. How many people know what a TOC is? Reads more like an error on the ticket printer.

 

[Bletchleyite]

All that work wasted, with overlapping text and still no sense like 'Unknown TOC'. How many people know what a TOC is? Reads more like an error on the ticket printer.

This all looks like a seriously inadequate test phase, as happens with too many IT projects these days.

 

[crehld]

This all looks like a seriously inadequate test phase, as happens with too many IT projects these days.

I think the case with these issues are that there are so many different types of TVMs. The issue is not down to testing therefore, but implementation and the equipment used. The new style tickets look great when purchased on a Northern Parkeon TVM. No text overlap (that I've discovered so far), clearly legible and in a different league to a number of the examples posted above.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
In fact I'll upload an example tonight to demonstrate what I mean!

 

[transmanche]

I believe that was also the intention, and research has shown to be the case, with regards to offering under 16s (and under 18s in fulltime education) free bus travel in London.

I think the beauty of the 16+ Zip card gives free bus/tram travel to all 16-17 year-old London residents as well as 18 year-olds in full-time education. (Plus any 16-17 year-old can use one to buy child rate Travelcard seasons and PAYG at half the adult rate.)

I know similar schemes operate in PTE areas, but various bus companies operate commercial schemes: Stagecoach have VIP in some areas (which I think gives about 1/3 off).

If it works on the buses...

 

[andrewkeith5]

I think the case with these issues are that there are so many different types of TVMs. The issue is not down to testing therefore, but implementation and the equipment used. The new style tickets look great when purchased on a Northern Parkeon TVM. No text overlap (that I've discovered so far), clearly legible and in a different league to a number of the examples posted above.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
In fact I'll upload an example tonight to demonstrate what I mean!

Excatly... Scheidt & Bachmann machines have always been regarded as by far the worst TVMs and those ticket examples just serve to emphasise that.

The Parkeon machines use variable-width fonts IIRC which are far, far easier to read and which these tickets are really designed for. The result is a much better ticket and S&B machines living up to their name as usual...