Tickets & Railcards: problems with fading ink/magnetic strips (merged topic, ongoing discussion)

[whole diary]

[JayMac]

Barely visible! A bit over officious from the ticket clerk at Temple Meads. Try again another day with a different clerk.

Now, my DSB railcard was replaced by post without me even needing to surrender the badly faded old one!

[ChrisB]

There's a blog about some people attempting to redesign the ticket here

Now all they need to do is to look at the stock its printed on :-)

[Phil]

Waste of time and money in my opinion. Research should be going into introducing electronic ticket booking / purchase / display / validation / check-in & out via and on a mobile phone, not redesigning a "technology" that dates back to the 1830s for goodness sake

[JayMac]

Yes. Electronic ticketing/smart cards should be the way forward. Not attempting to crowd more information onto the existing ticket stock.

The current RSP ticket stock is old technology that cannot cope with the information that, these days, needs to be coded on the magnetic strip. Just look at the the amount of tickets that are refused by gatelines with a 'seek assistance' message.

The magnetic strip can only cope with very limited data. No more than 24 bits I believe. Fine when they were introduced in the mid 80s, but no longer fit for purpose.

[Brucey]

Gatelines and on-board ticket machines that can scan barcodes and work online are the way forward.  Even if the current ticket stock is used for tickets bought in person, this will allow for more options to purchase tickets (e.g. print at home and mobile phones).

Some countries (e.g. Spain) allow all RENFE^▸ (Spanish National Railways (Red Nacional de Ferrocarriles Espanoles)) tickets to be purchased online and printed at home.  Even some ticket office tickets now have a barcode which can be scanned on the train (instead of checking all the details manually).

[ChrisB]

That#'s fine if you can persuade the TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) to man every train & check tickets after every stop...

[JayMac]

Well, modern ticketing technology is working in other markets. It's only the intransigence and vested interests of ATOC^» (Association of Train Operating Companies See - here) and individual TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) that are currently preventing UK^▸ (United Kingdom) Rail from moving forward.

Not all blame though should be directed at ATOC. The DfT^» (Department for Transport - about), and UK Government in general, are complicit also.

Privatisation of rail services can work. Inter-available ticketing within a privatised network can work. Unfortunately the rushed model drawn up by the, privatise everything, Conservatives (Railways Act 1993) was flawed from the outset.

Many other nations have sucessfully privatised their passenger rail networks without all the problems we in the UK have experienced.

UK PLC picked the wrong model of privatisation. But that's pretty typical of the UK's insular 'we know best' style of politics.

[6 OF 2 redundant adjunct of unimatrix 01]

all stations on the west of england line upto pinhoe have a device on the ticket machines which reads the chip in the oyster cards, now i thought that this was just the same type of machine used by all south west trains stations, however honiton and axminster have recently had stand alone card readers installed, any ideas why?

[Brucey]

The readers at SWT^▸ (South West Trains) stations are for ITSO cards (not Oyster^▸ (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services) cards, although they work in a similar way).  All ungated SWT stations will have standalone readers installed which allow the smartcards to be validated before boarding.

I don't know how far the trial has gone, but SWT was trying out loading season tickets onto these cards on one route.  Many stations (e.g. Cosham) have had the readers for years, albeit either bagged up or never used.

London Midland also use the ITSO system: http://www.londonmidland.com/smart-card/faq/1-what-is-itso-smartcard-ticketing-/1/

[JayMac]

SWT^▸ (South West Trains)'s roll put of ITSO is laudable, but before doing so they should've ensured that their TVMs^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) and stations within the TfL^» (Transport for London - about) area were fully compliant with Oyster^▸ (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services). It's all well and good for SWT to say that Oyster journeys are now available from any station within the TfL zones, but in many SWT locations it is still the case that passengers have to go to a local newsagent etc. to top up because the TVMs at the station don't offer Oyster top up facilities.

[Andrew1939 from West Oxon]

As I am now retired I no longer travel as much as when I worked full time. However my daughter was until recently an annual season ticket holder and her ticket never lasted the year as the ink faded after about 6 months and the magnetic strip failed to operate the platform gates after an even shorter period of time sometimes. She was told to make sure the ticket was stored well away from magnetic influences but even then, the tickets often had to be replaced yet the many other cards that most people carry around usually last for years.

[paul7575]

SWT^▸ (South West Trains)'s roll put of ITSO is laudable, but before doing so they should've ensured that their TVMs^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) and stations within the TfL^» (Transport for London - about) area were fully compliant with Oyster^▸ (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services).

But they weren't supposed to need to do that because according to the 2007 franchise agreement the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) were going to ensure that TfL made all their system ITSO compatible in similar timescales. 

DfT couldn't make it happen and SWT basically took all the flack on the DfT's behalf... 

I suspect (based on discussions elsewhere) the fundamental reason is that the ITSO spec cannot yet run a PAYG^▸ (Pay as you go) procedure at the speeds required by TfL's ticket barriers.  SWT and others such as LM^▸ (London Midland - recent franchise) are yet to provide anything other than seasons on ITSO...

Paul

[coolsecretspy]

i think this is an awesome idea, i think the current tickets are quite boring and not really that interesting to look at, i would be really interested to see what the new tickets would look like if they actually decided to re-design the tickets.

[6 OF 2 redundant adjunct of unimatrix 01]

'css' i wouldnt be expect exciting beautiful tickets just a different text layout and maybe colour

[Andrew1939 from West Oxon]

 . . .  and uses ink that is not invisible ink, i.e. it doesn't disappear after a few months as so often happens now on a season ticket!