Struner
Member
when you can’t tap your destination?
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The best and worst countries for railway ticketing.
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BazingaTribe
Member
Interesting. I got there way too early so I thought I'd go to the cashier. Oh well, next time...
That's more about pace of rollout than design of the end product.
Besides, the UK is too big for universal PAYG - longer journeys with expensive tickets need to have passengers properly perceiving the price before they commit to the transaction.
Stations like Amsterdam Zuid and Schiedam Centrum should have just the one general paid area with passengers interchanging between NS and GVB/RET without having to touch out and back in. Revenue allocation should be based on passenger ultimate origins and destinations by an algorithm. This is how it works at Stratford and Highbury & Islington (and countless more in London).
The other thing I'm surprised about the Dutch system is the lack of all-mode city tickets - you have to choose between 'no trains' and 'only trains', which is surprising for a country otherwise known for excellent multi-modal integration.
Struner
Member
oh dear, I don’t know whether your language has a saying expressing something like “pilots ashore are the best”
(“de beste stuurlui staan aan wal”)
oh dear, I don’t know whether your language has a saying expressing something like “pilots ashore are the best”
(“de beste stuurlui staan aan wal”)
No need to take it personally.
Amalie
Member
One advantage to the Dutch system is that, although it’s expensive, it’s at least consistent. There’s no extreme price difference for booking very early and showing up on the spot for domestic trains. My Dutch opinion is that it is your personal responsibility to ensure that you’re able to pay for the train ride you wish to take, but I digress.
That’s not always possible to calculate. For example, it’s possible to travel between Duivendrecht and Amsterdam Amstel by either Metro or train. That is true for many stations of course, but this is unique because, if it wasn’t for separate metro/train gates/poles, it would be impossible to determine if the person took the train or metro as the platforms are shared. The same would apply for Den Haag Laan van NOI and Schiedam Centrum. There are also train stations which are served by multiple companies, in which it wouldn’t be possible to determine which train the person took.
There are a few tickets that are intermodal but they’re not common. The Holland travel ticket and the Amsterdam travel ticket on top of my head. I do agree that they should have more of them, and have them be more accessible. A few years back I needed to do a ridiculously long back-and-forth journey where it became cheaper to use the Holland travel ticket, and even there I needed to go to manned service desk to pick it up at the station. It certainly felt funny to tap-in/out of busses with a printed train ticket. I also recall that you can buy intermodal tickets with the 9292 app.
The advantage of the Netherlands is it's small. Would it be appropriate to have PAYG for Hamburg - Frankfurt? Absolutely and categorically not.
If the goal is integrated ticketing then the only geographical determinant of the fare should be origin-destination. The route (as long as it's reasonable) and the operator (as long as it is available) should not enter the equation at all.
If there are different fare regimes that operate within an area then one should override the others. 'National Rail' should adopt city fare structures (flat or zonal) for journeys within those tariff areas. There should one fare for Duivendrecht - Amsterdam Amstel.
There are multiple route options for Finsbury Park - Farringdon. Both stations have notional National Rail and London Underground fare gates but the paid area is inter-linked. The system does not 'know' whether you travelled by tube, national rail, or a weird combination. The back-office algorithm aggregates all the Finsbury Park - Farringdon revenue over the entire day and allocates it to London Underground and National Rail based on calibrated parameters.
What happens on an Sittard - Maastricht journey? There's an approximate 4tph service with NS and Arriva Limburg each providing half the service level. Do you have to read the departure board first before working out whether to touch on yellow or blue readers?
That's what the Dutch operators didn't want because they wanted to be paid the correct fares up to the last cent and the government didn't force them to work something out.
That's indeed what you currently have to do. Single check in/out for trains is supposed to be implemented after the new OVpay system has been rolled out completely. Finally.
The British often fall down on execution (inconsistent, messy, etc), but when it comes to an overarching 'passengers first' design ethos, the British LENNON + ORCATS + 'PTE Overlay' system trumps the Dutch OV system.
Beachcomber
Member
As the development of the OV Chipkaart started in 2001, the participating transport companies insisted that "their" transactions must be completely shielded from other companies' prying eyes. This sensitiveness dates from experiences with the preceding national Strippenkaart (mostly for bus-tram-metro only), which was centrally administered, with revenue divided on the basis of passenger counts. These counts were of course collected by the transportation companies themselves, and rumour has it that some inflation of these counts did happen, increasing the share of some bad guys. And as @rvdborgt wrote: government or politics did not interfere.
Hmm. And what happens during periods of disruption and you don't really know which operator's train is going to arrive first? Do you hover at the poles and touch in last minute once you see the colour of train arriving?
Beachcomber
Member
Hovering indeed. In fact, a conductor/revenue protection officer cannot "see" a check-in at a pole from a different operator, and thus assumes "no valid ticket". This situation is even worse for passengers with an NS Flex agreement. In this case, all transactions are billed by the NS back-office, and any discrepancy (wrong class, wrong check-in) is automatically recorded and fined.
renegademaster
Established Member
PAYG works from Maastricht to Groningen which is roughly the same distance as London- Manchester
I'd have thought the appropriate thing to compare is the fares (both absolute value and the complexity), rather than distance travelled.
I don't think that the fare from Maastricht to Groningen is anywhere near the £193 for an Anytime between London and Manchester.
Nor that the walk-up fares will vary by more than a factor of 2 depending on when you travel, as is the case for London to Manchester.
renegademaster
Established Member
That is the crux of it.
If the industry stopped treating anytimes as a penalty fare or a way of milking an ever dwindling amount of people with company credit cards who don't care how much they pay, PAYG would work.
Angmering1974
On Moderation
It's about 33 EUR lol
Ireland South: relatively simple some tickets cheaper online in advance. Easy on train upgrade to ist class. Helpful ticket offices. Good rovers
Ireland North fairly simple, buy on board where no ticket office or machine. Mobile app and zonal smart cards. Cheap day tickets for all NI.
Canada seemed easy to buy on line. Quickest to refund direct to my bank account when they cancelled my long distance train owing to Covid
Ireland North fairly simple, buy on board where no ticket office or machine. Mobile app and zonal smart cards. Cheap day tickets for all NI.
Canada seemed easy to buy on line. Quickest to refund direct to my bank account when they cancelled my long distance train owing to Covid
Not for me - I couldn't get the VIA rail web site to take a British bank card.
I had to get the person I was staying with to buy the tickets and then pay them back.
Does Luxembourg count?
Or Liechtenstein?
That might win for the simplest system, but I wouldn't count one with no advance tickets as the best unless the country's small enough or tickets are cheap enough that walk-up fares for long journeys (at least compared to the country's size) are affordable.
Well that's the ideal for passengers, isn't it? Cheap walk-up tickets and no need for advances.
Not Europe, but Victoria, Australia is hard to beat.
A state around the size of UK, with an impressively comprehensive service given the population density, simple ticketing and a daily fare cap of $11.40 ($8.00 weekends and holidays) [halve that for £] - covering trains and integrated coaches.
Mainline421
Member
Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia, Portugal (although some trains require reservation), Serbia(?). Probably many more, Finland has only one fare type but it works like an Advance
Does Belgium have any apart from Eurostar and DB services between Antwerp / Liège and Brussels (or just the latter, as I can't see a way to buy Eurostar fares for Antwerp – Brussels by itself)?
I think also there are some countries where advances do exist but don't give much of a discount and probably only account for a fairly small fraction of sales.
Romania comes to mind. Also Poland maybe?
I don't think there's much in the way of advance fares in the Netherlands.
Maybe Antwerp-Brussels is like Amsterdam-Rotterdam where I believe that Eurostar (ex Thalys) used to sell tickets but no longer do.
I'm not sure the prices actually varied when they did. Even when all other services between Amsterdan and Rotterdam were cancelled due to strikes the price didn't seem to go up.
Finland has more flexibility on commuter services, but yeah, all long-distance and regional trains are advances with seat reservations on long-distance trains. Obviously we also have season tickets and multi-tickets which allow you to book a journey very close to the time, but only if there are seats/spaces free.
NS fairly recently introduced the PriceTime Deal.
Eurostar don't sell any domestic tickets anymore in any country.
You may be right there.
dutchflyer
Established Member
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Larger countries with, AFAIK, no ´real´ lower advance tickets/fares, are mostly Eastern-Europe, probably heritage of the past. Hungary, Slovenija, the 3 baltics; Lithuania/Latvia/Eestti=Estonia spring in my mind. From what I recall the cheaper/lower advance tickets they do offer are for INTernational. So there might be the odd case where such a ticket would come out a few cents cheaper as a domestic fare for a longer run. But this may well have been introduced since I did my last search-years ago by now.
Also here in ASEAN its the norm: Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia do not offer them. BUT there is for some populair routes/seasons in higher demand another catch: such tickets in the classes in higher demand (yes, 1st cl. sleepers) are snapped up by agencies as soon as released/open for sale who then sell them onward to customers in the know at an added premium. But all the time I visit THailand-by now well over 33 years, the basic 3d cl. regional fares have not been raised. But the various supplements for express/sleeper etc. have been. In that time basic BMTA Bangkok citybuses fares have gone up from then 2 to now 8 THB. Some other mostly aimed at locals state-set prices are also stable all that time, like some specific postage stamps.
Also here in ASEAN its the norm: Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia do not offer them. BUT there is for some populair routes/seasons in higher demand another catch: such tickets in the classes in higher demand (yes, 1st cl. sleepers) are snapped up by agencies as soon as released/open for sale who then sell them onward to customers in the know at an added premium. But all the time I visit THailand-by now well over 33 years, the basic 3d cl. regional fares have not been raised. But the various supplements for express/sleeper etc. have been. In that time basic BMTA Bangkok citybuses fares have gone up from then 2 to now 8 THB. Some other mostly aimed at locals state-set prices are also stable all that time, like some specific postage stamps.
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