Great Western Coffee Shop

Sounds like a great leap forward!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/12075299/End-of-the-paper-train-ticket-as-railways-go-paperless.html

The roll out will be quite quick,  London and Southeast region of the UK is pretty much there with most ticket machines and platform ticket barriers already equipped with the required technology.  Other major combinations are not far behind.

I can see season ticket holders of anything more than a weekly getting issued with a smart card (similar to an Oyster)

That sounds really promising. Just to be clear, does it mean that one day those passengers on the Severn Beach line who don't travel to BRI will be able to fare-dodge contactlessly?

It wont be the end of paper tickets. Unless we ban people who don't have a contactless card from travelling?

The current options in London I believe are oyster card (registered to user), tourist oyster bought from shop or contactless debit,credit card. The biggest danger is that is requires scan ON and OFF train. Miss one scan of, then you have to pay the maximum price for the possible journey you may have made.

Imagine having contactless debit and credit cards in your wallet ... fun

One area not discussed are ticket prices and bands. Will the system reliably charge you a weeks/month/annual season ticket price where it is cheaper than repeat journeys? Will it handle off-peak journeys and provide split ticket prices?

Or people buying tickets on behalf of other members of their family.

Pretty much everyone will have one within a year or two - I suspect you will still be able to purchase paper tickets in some circumstances, but contactless will be incentivised like Oyster by making it cheaper.

It'll be a great deal cheaper than getting ripped off by TVMs, or staff who don't know how to offer the cheapest fare....are the railways obliged to offer split ticketing or is that just people in the know exploiting a loophole?

Can't wait to see the fun on the gate line at Pad with this good luck BNM.

The tap in tap out only applies to Pay as you go, Oysters brought as a season ticket it is not so critical provided you don't travel out of max zone for that season.

Card clash is a problem now if people have Oyster and another chipped card, bank or office building door cards even the railways own Track Access ID cards are chipped and cause clashes  ::)


This is why I believe season tickets will be a smart card type ticket and likely to have the photo of the holder printed on it.

Bought my new paper season ticket a few days ago. During the previous annual tickets validity I had to replace it 3 times because the mag stripe stopped working (twice in the first 2 months) and a fourth time because the ink had smudged making the expiry date illegible, causing bus drivers and ticket inspectors to give me dirty looks. I hope a smart card is more reliable.

I am generally in favour of the proposals if it makes my ticket buying easier. Not being an Oyster user it may take time for me to get used to tapping out at stations that do not have any form of barrier.

Split ticketing is in the national terms and conditions - and I'm note sure how they get changed. And I wouldn't call them a "loophole" ... they're a perfectly sensible way to let someone who's got a return ticket from B to C start their return journey at A or carry on to D without having to drop back by the time interval between trains; they have only become a 'loophole' because of the differential pricing per mile of shorter and longer journeys used by the railways to raise additional revenue on longer journeys ... rail journeys are one of the few commodities where buying in bulk (more miles) has you charged more per unit than buying a small quantity.

I do wonder if a contactless system would involve swipe out and swipe back in to make up a journey of multiple 'tickets', and whether we would see hordes of people running up to the swipe machines at certain stations and rushing to get back on the same train. 

Surely if the whole ticket is stored, not pay as you go there would be no need to tap out?

How will it work if you pay by PayPal or similar? Or are the ToCs still too old-fashioned to recognise these methods?  :o

But really it's not to do with the ToCs or even Red spotted hanky etc. It's being promoted by the UK Cards Association. Why? Clearly, more opportunities to charge for handling with cards than cash (yes, I know businesses get charged for cash handling, but cards provide the possibility of charging the purchaser too) and, perhaps more importantly, more tracking.

Oh, and what about paying in Bitcoin?  ::)

I suspect that the high costs of handling cash means there is less profit for the banks in this. I suppose the high costs also apply to the TOCs as well.   

Surely the handling charges are higher for cash precisely because banks prefer people to use debit or credit cards (or interbank transfers)? And they prefer those in part at least because the handling costs ^ as reflected by the charges ^ are lower.

Paying with a contactless card would make the need to use Paypal etc redundant, surely that's one of the advantages?

For PayPal I was thinking of people buying tickets online in advance. I'm not sure how you use a contactless card online ^ well, of course you can, but you won't be making use of its contactlessness ^ and some people might prefer PayPal for its security and (perceived) controllability, as well as for its habitually siding with the purchaser in cases of dispute; while others might shun it for its (perceived) lack of security!

Then we have the likes of mPesa, but I'm not sure if they operate in the UK.

I banked a load of cash and cheques last week and it took the cashier several minutes (you didn't want to be in the queue behind me).  The cheques took no time to process it was the cash that took the time.  That is why banks charge so much to bank cash. That and the security costs of handling large amounts of cash.    

Yep! Though what we see the cashier doing is presumably only part of the story. Cheques are easy for the cashier to deal with but then require correlating with other banks, and so on.

One thing I've noticed is the preferred method of payment varies from country to country. Three air tickets bought within a month or so of each other, one each in UK, Poland, India: UK wanted a card, Poland accepted a card but wanted a transfer, India wanted cash.

Some countries retail banking was originally based on giros or credit transfers rather than cheques. If you wanted to pay someone, you would get a giro slip from them with their bank account details on (or get the details to use on your own pre-printed giros), and send it to your own institution who would do the transfer. This naturally evolved today into entering the same details online. Some countries with a dominant giro system operated by the Post Office which banks belonged to never used personal cheques to any extent.

Similar to TfL now, you can only buy singles, peak and off-peak. Or seasons

Who wanted a fares simplification? Looks as though you'll get it!

I won't be holding my breath!