The state of ITSO ticketing

[londonbridge]

For one thing, all the ticket barriers have to go on is the encoded magnetic stripe on the back of the ticket. This has incredibly limited capacity and does not even contain full details of the ticket type let alone the restriction code, hence it is only possible for the barriers (even if they are correctly programmed, which is not a given) to make a guess at whether a ticket is valid or not.

Agreed. I had an advance from Sunderland to London route EC & connections, got the metro to Newcastle Central, went to go through the barrier to the platform and got a 'ticket not valid at this location' error message.

 

[andrewkeith5]

It's worse than that. There are separate ones for SWT and EMT.

Go Ahead is no different, if anything they're worse. I know of at least four different "the key" smartcards:

the key (red, oxford bus company)
the key (green, London midland)
the key (green, southern railway)
the key (blue, metrobus)

A quick check of Wikipedia shows that soon enough there could be 10, all called the same thing but not compatible with each other (well, yet, anyway).

What's annoying is how much better the bus operators are at implementing smart cards - on my key (blue, metrobus) I can get tickets to cover just about everything short of an actual pay as you go system, including flexible multitrip passes. Train ops seem to be struggling with the most basic of season tickets when, realistically, it would be pretty simple to start switching over most season ticket holders to smartcards if only somebody could be bothered.

Interoperability is, interestingly, also starting to creep in - you can now have a plusbus ticket added to your key (green, southern) to use in buses otherwise covered by the key (blue, metrobus), so at least Go Ahead/Govia have started to work out how to put more than one application on a card....

Anyone else confused yet? :P

 

[Muzer]

The unilink The Key site was activated a few days back, and I've had a look - I seem to be able to load Salisbury bus tickets onto it if (and only if) I log in with the same details on the Wilts & Dorset The Key site. So at least there's that. I haven't tried further afield, and I haven't tried actually loading the ticket (I'd be surprised if I do more than two or three journeys on Salisbury Reds in the next few years)