Rail minister Lord Peter Hendy said: “The railway ticketing system is far too complicated
So by making it reliant upon a foreign satellite navigation system, everyone having a working phone, and a willingness to give us permission to track all of your movements, we’ve now made it simpler than a piece of paper!
It does seem like a very over-engineered solution, with far too many points of failure.
I’m not saying it’s better from a privacy point of view. It’s clearly not. And it is more complicated behind the scenes to track 3.000.000 people than to print little pieces of paper. But, they aren’t lying when saying it is indeed less complicated to the end user, Instead of figuring out ticketing systems and pricing scales from various companies, regions, with different regulations about exceptions on prices or how many people are a “group”, etc to find the ticket / price that is the best deal for you, you just “activate” when getting on a vehicle and “deactivate” when done traveling. I’ve used it, it’s called Fairtiq here and it really is waaaay less complicated to use for average end user than any other ticketing system like counters, machines, websites. They track you, the data is hopefully also used for optimising public transport towards measured demand, and in return for tracking they promise you’ll always get the best possible price for whatever route you travelled. It’s not the worst way to use tracking technologies.
Aye, so to compensate for a complicated, privatised, and fractured rail system, they implement a complicated ticketing system in the name of convenience. It’s a shit system to cover for all the other shit systems within English rail.
If they instead nationalise the rail, the end user can have simple fares from one easy provider.
The railways have been de facto nationalised since 2020. The ticketing system is complex, but privatisation wasn’t the only reason for that.
Publicly owned / run public transport often also has very complicated tariff structures. I’m in Germany. There are many different Verbunds (regions), they all have their own app, their own prices, their own logos, etc. With the fairtiq, using public transport becomes like the Deutschlandticket, but for once in a while users, while Deutschlandticket subscription is for regular users. It effectively takes away the headaches here for having to know/choose which tickets, navigating new apps or machines, because every region has different price structures and regions are divided in various zones etcetera. With fairtiq you can use a bus to a city Bahnhof, a regional train to another city and then a tram to your destination. That covers 3 companies, also when it’s not privatised but publicly regionalised. Such a ticket really does make it less complicated for the end user to do such a travel when they don’t do that often, and they will often be cheaper off than if they had purchased 3 separate tickets.
Creating a one big catch-all public transport company for an entire country (public or privately run, doesn’t matter much in this case) creates a whole lot of different problems everywhere. Try getting a local tiny thingy fixed in Sheffield if the decision to do so first has to go to London for 3 approval stamps and an allocated tiny budget.
The problem you’re having, I think, is that they seem to want to replace all existing ticket options by this tracking one. That’s a very bad idea indeed, for one you’re luckily still not obligated to carry a phone with you at all times. The paper alternative should stay possible, but the fairtiq style ticket does have benefits both for users and for public transport companies.
In D.C. (one of the few places in the US with good public transport) you can get a pass you put money on. Then you just scan it when you enter/exit a station and you get billed for the price of that trip. It’s dead simple. (It could be made even simpler if you just connected a credit card to it though, or if it just was, as an option, your credit card or google/apple pay.)
It sounds like to fix this problem the government just needs to regulate these companies and implement a similar system. It’s far simpler and more reliable and robust.
The reason that works is the gates. I dunno in Britain, but in Germany the gates at stations are very uncommon, even for underground stations. Pretty much every station is freely accessible to anyone. Think at this point installing gates in so many places is more expensive than for example running a Tracking-Ticket system. It would also always still exclude busses, normal streetcars etc. Netherlands has the gates and you can just use your banking card as you say, but gates are only installed for the real trains, not trams or buses. While the ease of use of the tracking ticket for me is the super smooth integration of all forms of regional and local public transport.
The problem with it though is it would seem you still need another option available. Not everyone has a smartphone. Presumably they still want to service those people, so they have to provide some other option. The scan on/off system works for everyone, and it could easily be extended to busses. It’d work the same as a station, but you do it entering/exiting the bus.
I could see the issue with stations that don’t have gates, but again, they should be trying to service everyone, including those without a smart phone. They have to add something to those stations I would hope and assume. It might as well be a scan point —which could be something besides a gate.
That’s a non-issue in Britain where essentially all bank cards are contactless.
It still needs somewhere to tap. RFID is short range.
Bag of cocks. Simplify the ticketing system by:
a) make all the tickets generally cheaper, so you don’t need to make special advance super saver restricted use tickets
b) actually tell us when peak time is, and keep it consistent
c) no more “you can only use it on this train company” tickets
d) no more “you can only use it on this exact train” tickets. If you cancel my train, I’m getting on the next train that goes there and you’re accepting my ticket.
e) there are three main tickets - single, day return, period return
f) you can buy discounted tickets for a week, month, year of the same journey
g) you can buy a ticket online, from a website to email, from an app, in a ticket office with a person or from a machine
Basically, just get rid of the stupid shit with all the “special” conditions on it.
Myeah not entirely an unfair comment.
But I’ve worked in Switzerland and literally it’s even simpler there. You start and app, you say “I’m starting a journey”, you climb onboard and when you get off, you indicate on the app that the journey has completed. You are then charged the cheapest for a journey from your A to your B.
Still inspection onboard, eg if you sit in first class with a second class tracking ticket, but it’s a two-click operation.
Fairtiq it’s called. Pretty neat.
a) prices are set at a level that balances the oversupply at off-peak times and the under supply at peak times. The solution to this is to build new rail routes but the NIMBYs have taken over.
b) peak demand occurs at different times at different parts of the network. Operators do make those times available.
c) these will be gone when franchises are rolled up.
d) that’s already in the T&Cs of advance tickets
If the train you purchased a ticket for is cancelled or is delayed and you still decide to travel, special arrangements will be made to accommodate you on another train (although a seat cannot be guaranteed).
(Sorry if this sounds like I’m whinging at you - I’m really whinging about them)
a & b) I get that peak times exist. I didn’t argue against it. I regularly experience ~400 people squashing onto a 200 capacity commuter train - so yes, dissuading other people from thinking “that’s a good time to go for a day out” is fine. Regarding telling you when it is, maybe some operators do, but I’ve not been able to find this for any of the routes I use. The ticket buying website knows when peak is, as if you select a time, it either does or doesn’t show you an off-peak return amongst the tickets offered, but nowhere actually tells you exactly when and where. In some places they have some peak in the morning and afternoon, others morning only. If you’re working away for a week, and head over on the Sunday night and get an off-peak return, which return trains are peak or off-peak? You finish an hour earlier then expected - peak or off-peak? You don’t know until it rejects your ticket and they fine you. Really, if they’d just show on the ticket buying websites/apps “this one is peak” “this one is off-peak”, that would do me fine.
c) Yes - I’m looking forward to it :)
d) It might say that, but that’s not what seems to happen. Even if the person in the station says “yes, don’t worry, this will be valid on that train”, the person on the train can still decide it isn’t and fine you (you can appeal it when you get home, assuming you’re rich enough to buy another full ticket plus £100 fine).
Maybe I’m just travelling on the routes with the shittest train companies? :)
Anyway, as you say, half of these problems should hopefully disappear when the separate privatised companies’ contracts run out :)
Or nationalise it and then simplify it like this:
Glad I’m from Northern Ireland where our railways are still somewhat nationalised
This is going to end up as one of those hugely expensive IT project failures and pissed off customers.
GPS isn’t the most reliable thing when travelling in a metal tube, through tunnels, and arriving in big buildings with Victorian iron roofs.
Please just fix the existing system instead of replacing it with a shittier one. Not everyone has a phone.
Edit - probably to be introduced at the same time they get rid of peak fares to “sweeten the deal”
Just no
“How can we get them to accept constant GPS tracking?”
“Easy, start with train tickets, like you’re doing them a favour”
The UK is on a very slippery slope
Weird that it needs GPS given that the barriers that need to scan the barcode already know where you are!
I have a KeyGo card and this works great - you scan the card at the barriers and it works out and bills you at the end of the day. Doesn’t need an app or a powered up phone.
The overwhelming majority of stations don’t have barriers.
If you can’t scan an ITSO card, you can’t scan the barcode on the app either. In both cases some sort of scanner needs to be installed (doesn’t need to be barriers).
This only benefits passengers if it comes at the same time as fixing the fare structures.
At the moment it’s often cheaper to buy a split ticket, because it can be inexplicably far more expensive to buy a ticket between station A and station C than it is to buy tickets between stations A and B, and B and C on the exact same train. This would be impossible in a tap-on-tap-off type system; if it’s just used to lock people out of cheaper fares, that’s not good.
I never bothered, but I know in the Pokémon Go era there were people with apps that modified their GPS location to catch rare Pokémon without traveling. I don’t know how that functioned, but I assume it could be used on this, right? It can’t know if your location is spoofed or not. This doesn’t seem like a very smart solution.
Please release this tomorrow because I don’t have a smartphone and it means I will have another reason to not go into the office
They make faraday cages for phones these days.
