Scotty
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The same way you get your Oyster history...
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Smart Ticketing - What will it mean for rail users ?
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The same way you get your Oyster history...
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Andrewlong
Member
I would be perfectly happy to have option of train ticket being downloaded on my mobile - ticket would need a redesign if it was going to be scanned at a barrier.
Buying tickets online is so easy - it's the end bit of having to obtain a paper ticket which is a bind by keying in number at machine. Especially as my local car park allows you to buy your ticket via an app on your smartphone allowing you to enter/exit it without messing around with money in mmachines. Plus you get a nice vat receipt email for claiming expenses! Nice.
Buying tickets online is so easy - it's the end bit of having to obtain a paper ticket which is a bind by keying in number at machine. Especially as my local car park allows you to buy your ticket via an app on your smartphone allowing you to enter/exit it without messing around with money in mmachines. Plus you get a nice vat receipt email for claiming expenses! Nice.
The barriers at Euston platform 1/2/3 are able to read print-at-home tickets with QR codes. No reason this type of ticket couldn't be done on a mobile phone like airline boarding cards.
I guess the problem is the opportunity for fraud, and train tickets are far more complicated (thankfully) than plane tickets. Get rid of walkup tickets and compulsory reservations and you could do it, but that would massivly impact the travelling public.
We have been through this several times before. It's quite possible to have walk up, flexible tickets, printed at home and using QR codes. Several other countries in Europe do so.
See, for example, this thread for a discussion of the issues: http://www.railforums.co.uk/showpost.php?p=2319403&postcount=87
The problem with smart ticketing on the National Rail network is that government and politicians view it as a panacea for "passenger choice" and also a means to demonstrate modernity and to cut costs of ticket selling. They look at Oyster and think it means instant massive ridership gains, more money in the bank and lower fares. All of this ignores the nature of transport and business activity in Greater London and the sheer density of the transport network.
I recall one comment from Shashi Verma, TfL's Director of Passenger Experience, who is responsible for Oyster. He said that one reason why Oyster is very complicated "under the surface" is that it was built upon a load of old and longstanding commercial rules. Clearly some other rules were junked, e.g day returns, when PAYG was introduced. That to me is a key point so far as the NR network is concerned.
What are trying to do? Who are you doing it for? I am deeply sceptical that you replace paper ticketing with some form of "smart" technology without severely affecting some of the key tenets of NR ticketing like the basic fare structure, break of journey, split ticketing, combined rover and single tickets etc. London has abandoned or does not allow some of these rules. People need to decide if the loss of some convenient facilities / rules is worth having a piece of plastic that can "talk" to the internet or something "virtual" that is recognised on their mobile phone.
At the end of the day you can design anything but the burden of supporting technology and mandatory action / compliance on the part of the passenger may be too much. Many years ago I used to understand NR ticketing but I have really lost the plot in recent years because of the impact of routeing, multiple TOC specific products and easements. I am deeply sceptical that railway staff and passengers have any sort of realistic prospect of keeping up with the current product and pricing structures and associated rules. That is not to criticise any members here btw - it's just an observation about complexity and the never ending pace of change.
If you were prepared to start again with a clean sheet of paper and were also prepared to fund a massive change in equipment provision then yes you could have smart ticketing on a nationwide basis. However you would probably lose a lot of what people have today in terms of some of the flexibility that dates back many many decades. I doubt people would agree to that though once the implications were understood.
I don't think the current proposition for "smart" ticketing, as recently explained by Roger Ford in Modern Railways, stands a chance of working. I think some people in government and the industry have been dazzled by a technological proposition that has too many potential "points of failure". The failure to deliver SEFT tells me that the fragmented structure of the industry is also a fundamental problem (e.g. commercial confidentiality, data ownership, system ownership). If you can't do SEFT then how on earth are you going to get a similar scheme introduced anywhere that works seamlessly?
I will sound immodest but given I worked on designing what became Oyster in London I could probably, with a fair wind and a lot of learning, come up with a smart ticketing proposition for National Rail but it probably would not replace all paper ticketing.
I recall one comment from Shashi Verma, TfL's Director of Passenger Experience, who is responsible for Oyster. He said that one reason why Oyster is very complicated "under the surface" is that it was built upon a load of old and longstanding commercial rules. Clearly some other rules were junked, e.g day returns, when PAYG was introduced. That to me is a key point so far as the NR network is concerned.
What are trying to do? Who are you doing it for? I am deeply sceptical that you replace paper ticketing with some form of "smart" technology without severely affecting some of the key tenets of NR ticketing like the basic fare structure, break of journey, split ticketing, combined rover and single tickets etc. London has abandoned or does not allow some of these rules. People need to decide if the loss of some convenient facilities / rules is worth having a piece of plastic that can "talk" to the internet or something "virtual" that is recognised on their mobile phone.
At the end of the day you can design anything but the burden of supporting technology and mandatory action / compliance on the part of the passenger may be too much. Many years ago I used to understand NR ticketing but I have really lost the plot in recent years because of the impact of routeing, multiple TOC specific products and easements. I am deeply sceptical that railway staff and passengers have any sort of realistic prospect of keeping up with the current product and pricing structures and associated rules. That is not to criticise any members here btw - it's just an observation about complexity and the never ending pace of change.
If you were prepared to start again with a clean sheet of paper and were also prepared to fund a massive change in equipment provision then yes you could have smart ticketing on a nationwide basis. However you would probably lose a lot of what people have today in terms of some of the flexibility that dates back many many decades. I doubt people would agree to that though once the implications were understood.
I don't think the current proposition for "smart" ticketing, as recently explained by Roger Ford in Modern Railways, stands a chance of working. I think some people in government and the industry have been dazzled by a technological proposition that has too many potential "points of failure". The failure to deliver SEFT tells me that the fragmented structure of the industry is also a fundamental problem (e.g. commercial confidentiality, data ownership, system ownership). If you can't do SEFT then how on earth are you going to get a similar scheme introduced anywhere that works seamlessly?
I will sound immodest but given I worked on designing what became Oyster in London I could probably, with a fair wind and a lot of learning, come up with a smart ticketing proposition for National Rail but it probably would not replace all paper ticketing.
GaryMcEwan
Established Member
I've just transferred my paper annual season ticket onto Scotrail's Smartcard. So far had no problems with and the conductors seem to be carrying about mobile devices now so they can validate any passengers that have smartcards.
Apparently the only downside is journey is on the Argyle Line so most of it in under tunnels and the mobile devices need an internet connection to validate the card apparently.
The validators at the stations as well seem to scan quite quickly as well so and it looks like Scotrail are going to be heavily promoting the smartcard over the next few months...
Apparently the only downside is journey is on the Argyle Line so most of it in under tunnels and the mobile devices need an internet connection to validate the card apparently.
The validators at the stations as well seem to scan quite quickly as well so and it looks like Scotrail are going to be heavily promoting the smartcard over the next few months...
gimmea50anyday
Established Member
E-tickets on mobile apps include a ticket and a barcode. The barcode can be scanned by barriers to open the gates or by ticket inspectors with a barcode reader paired up to a mobile device. Once the barcode is scanned it is recorded what time and on what train and by whom. Only a small number of people use the scanners at this time (TPE RPO's have them but conductors dont) but is expected to be rolled out alongside the replacement for avantix.
With 4.5G at 800 or 700MHz and 5G coming, plus IoT developments, eventually every member of staff will be connected just about everywhere. Likely even underground. Real time checking will open up lots of new doors for ticketing and reducing fraud.
I can see that you could one day have a credit card sized card with integrated EInk display showing a ticket but also operating as a smart card. Wireless charging could keep it powered for years, so no need to even carry a mobile. IoT beacons would even mean your ticket would know where it was without battery sapping GPS.
For now, even local buses that aren't connected in real time can prevent multiple use of a mobile ticket because the barcode regenerates every few seconds, and contains date/time info that must match that of the machine, making a screen capture useless or a printed barcode that someone tries to use on another bus.
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Old Yard Dog
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Not sure I agree. When OV chipkaarts first came out, very few ticket vending machines allowed you to top up with a foreign credit card, only Dutch ones. And they only accepted coins not notes. But the last time I went, a few weeks ago, I managed to top up with Visa at Schiphol and again at Rotterdam Centraal.
The cards also expire after 5 years and you lose whatever credit you have. And you cannot even get on a train unless you have 20 euros credit preloaded.
Other than that OV chipkaarts do work, but only because fares are calculated per km and you don't need to worry about advance fares, peak time restrictions or split ticketing. If we had smart tickets here, we might need to carry more than one to do split ticketing. But they would try to stop that by refusing to let you link a senior railcard to more than one smart card.
No! You need to replace "if we had smart ticketing" with "if we had smart ticketing with pay as you go and nothing else" in your post.
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