National Rail - Smart Ticketing website (Swan Song for paper tickets)

Joe Paxton · 11 Nov 2019

I've just come across this website...
smartticketing.nationalrail.co.uk

It looks like RDG and the rail industry's push towards smart ticketing is moving up a notch.

eTickets in particular hold significant promise, I just hope the industry doesn't make a hash of it (e.g. failing to honour break of journey, etc).

RailUK Forums

bhb · 11 Nov 2019

It doesn’t look too official to me.

Joe Paxton · 11 Nov 2019

bhb said:
It doesn’t look too official to me.

It resides on a subdomain of the National Rail website so I think you can be pretty sure it's official.

i.e. smartticketing.nationalrail.co.uk

bhb · 11 Nov 2019

Fair enough. But, it just didn't ring true to me, in its colour scheme and the tone of the text and the fact that I couldn’t find any links to the actual national rail web site (doesn’t mean there weren’t any). It’s also a non secure site. So, for those reasons, I’ll steer clear of it.

Joe Paxton · 11 Nov 2019

bhb said:
Fair enough. But, it just didn't ring true to me, in its colour scheme and the tone of the text and the fact that I couldn’t find any links to the actual national rail web site (doesn’t mean there weren’t any). It’s also a non secure site. So, for those reasons, I’ll steer clear of it.

Fair points, especially re it being non-secure (i.e. http rather than https). My guess is that I stumbled across a site that hasn't yet 'gone live' to the public - hence the lack of links from the main NRE site, lack of https etc.

sheff1 · 11 Nov 2019

That site (or a least something very similar) was viewable at the end of last year. It already looked dated then.

bhb · 11 Nov 2019

Also, the National Rail website has its own smart ticket ‘area’:
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/218425.aspx

BlueFox · 11 Nov 2019

bhb said:
It’s also a non secure site. So, for those reasons, I’ll steer clear of it.

Being "non secure" just means data sent to the site isn't encrypted. If you were making payments, logging in, or sending them personal information via the website you'd have a point, but the site does none of those things.

bhb · 11 Nov 2019

BlueFox said:
Being "non secure" just means data sent to the site isn't encrypted. If you were making payments, logging in, or sending them personal information via the website you'd have a point, but the site does none of those things.

Very good point.
But, the actual national rail website is a secure site, so I’d expect an official offshoot to also be secure.

Joe Paxton · 11 Nov 2019

BlueFox said:
Being "non secure" just means data sent to the site isn't encrypted. If you were making payments, logging in, or sending them personal information via the website you'd have a point, but the site does none of those things.

Like it or not, serving websites via HTTPS is now best practice, and so it's fair enough for people to be wary of sites that only use HTTP - especially if they supposedly belong to big, established organisations (as opposed to say a local history group).

BlueFox · 11 Nov 2019

bhb said:
Very good point.
But, the actual national rail website is a secure site, so I’d expect an official offshoot to also be secure.

The main site allows people to create accounts and log in, so it needs to be secure.

There's no need to go to the expense of setting up a SSL certificate for something that looks like it's never been officially made public and doesn't take users' data. That doesn't mean it's a fake site. It's definitely part of National Rail.

Joe Paxton · 11 Nov 2019

BlueFox said:
...
There's no need to go to the expense of setting up a SSL certificate for something that looks like it's never been officially made public and doesn't take users' data. That doesn't mean it's a fake site. It's definitely part of National Rail.

Looking at some of the wording on the Smart Ticketing website, it doesn't seem like it was ever intended to be public-facing.

e.g. ...

How are Smart Tickets different?

It's simple but significant, Smart Tickets are held on your phone, in an app, on an email or on a Smartcard.

Tickets can be tracked from creation through to use, allowing train operators to understand their customers better and offer a more personalised and enhanced service.

That last paragraph is too detailed and irrelevant to be aimed at the public at large.

BlueFox · 11 Nov 2019

Joe Paxton said:
Like it or not, serving websites via HTTPS is now best practice, and so it's fair enough for people to be wary of sites that only use HTTP - especially if they supposedly belong to big, established organisations (as opposed to say a local history group).

It is best practice, but it became that way because Google now use it as a factor in ranking sites, and some browsers warn people about sites without valid SSL certificates. Those things only matter if it's a "live" site you want people to visit.
This one clearly isn't. If it was, they'd also have a privacy policy and company information - things that are a legal requirement for a company website in the UK.
The site should probably be password protected until it's ready to be released to the public, if that's what the plan is.

It's hosted on Amazon Web Services (as is the main Nationalrail site), you can also access it by going to http://smartticketing.nationalrail.co.uk.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com

yorkie · 12 Nov 2019

I'd ignore that site.

As documented on here, Season tickets are increasingly loaded onto Smart cards however for singles and return products which are currently issued as paper tickets, the future is e-tickets.

I'd avoid m-tickets and there is absolutely no point loading normal single or return tickets onto smart cards.

Genuine e-tickets are a good thing as they are not tied to a device, and can either be shown electronically or printed.

Joe Paxton said:
eTickets in particular hold significant promise, I just hope the industry doesn't make a hash of it (e.g. failing to honour break of journey, etc).

I can assure you that some individuals in the rail industry will be failing to honour break of journey regardless of the medium on which products are held, as the industry refuses to adopt sufficient safeguards to avoid such incidents occurring. The medium is not going to change that; it may be used as an excuse by some individuals to breach the contract, but it's an irrelevance really as they'd just use some other excuse.

PG · 12 Nov 2019

sheff1 said:
That site (or a least something very similar) was viewable at the end of last year. It already looked dated then.

Digging around on that site reveals links pointing to eastmidlandstrains so it looks like it hasn't been updated recently.

I'd say it was a development site which got canned.

Joe Paxton · 12 Nov 2019

PG said:
Digging around on that site reveals links pointing to eastmidlandstrains so it looks like it hasn't been updated recently.

I'd say it was a development site which got canned.

Agreed.

A Challenge · 12 Nov 2019

PG said:
Digging around on that site reveals links pointing to eastmidlandstrains so it looks like it hasn't been updated recently.

I'd say it was a development site which got canned.

Someone's probably forgotten to take it down then?

CyrusWuff · 12 Nov 2019

As much as it pains me to say it, that is a live site. I can't remember whether it was set up for Smart Week last month or the (soft) launch of the Smart Ticketing on National Rail (STNR) branding back in December last year, however.

The idea being that TOCs could link to it to save on duplication of content.

sprunt · 12 Nov 2019

I don't know about the status of the site, but there's a poster for smartcards at Limehouse at the moment with that origami swan on it, so elements of the branding are certainly public facing.

Clip · 12 Nov 2019

bhb said:
But, it just didn't ring true to me, in its colour scheme and the tone of the text and the fact that I couldn’t find any links to the actual national rail web site (doesn’t mean there weren’t any)

But the colour scheme as well as the swan are the colour scheme of tickets

pdeaves · 12 Nov 2019

sprunt said:
I don't know about the status of the site, but there's a poster for smartcards at Limehouse at the moment with that origami swan on it, so elements of the branding are certainly public facing.

Yes, GWR uses the origami swan, too (see https://flickr.com/photos/pdeaves/47659185131/).

JB_B · 12 Nov 2019

yorkie said:
I'd ignore that site.

As documented on here, Season tickets are increasingly loaded onto Smart cards however for singles and return products which are currently issued as paper tickets, the future is e-tickets.

I'd avoid m-tickets and there is absolutely no point loading normal single or return tickets onto smart cards.

Genuine e-tickets are a good thing as they are not tied to a device, and can either be shown electronically or printed.

I can assure you that some individuals in the rail industry will be failing to honour break of journey regardless of the medium on which products are held, as the industry refuses to adopt sufficient safeguards to avoid such incidents occurring. The medium is not going to change that; it may be used as an excuse by some individuals to breach the contract, but it's an irrelevance really as they'd just use some other excuse.

Certainly the medium shouldn't make a difference and I agree that there is no difference in terms of validity.

However, when I'm breaking my journey, my (admittedly limited) experience of e-tickets is 100% failure at barriers with barcode scanners - is that normal and to be expected?

I know that break of journey for mag-stripe/paper is far from perfect but I'd guess I'm getting 80%-90% success and so for the moment paper tickets still seem like a lot less hassle.

Wallsendmag · 12 Nov 2019

CyrusWuff said:
As much as it pains me to say it, that is a live site. I can't remember whether it was set up for Smart Week last month or the (soft) launch of the Smart Ticketing on National Rail (STNR) branding back in December last year, however.

The idea being that TOCs could link to it to save on duplication of content.

It was out long before Smart Week

Bletchleyite · 12 Nov 2019

JB_B said:
However, when I'm breaking my journey, my (admittedly limited) experience of e-tickets is 100% failure at barriers with barcode scanners - is that normal and to be expected?

I know that break of journey for mag-stripe/paper is far from perfect but I'd guess I'm getting 80%-90% success and so for the moment paper tickets still seem like a lot less hassle.

Barriers should treat barcodes and paper tickets the same, unless I'm mistaken?

Wallsendmag · 12 Nov 2019

Bletchleyite said:
Barriers should treat barcodes and paper tickets the same, unless I'm mistaken?

Depends on the manufacturer, in general you are mistaken.

plugwash · 12 Nov 2019

In my experiance break of journey with paper tickets often requires manual intervention too. Heck even changing trains sometimes does if you take an unusual route (most recently for me was having to be manually let through the NR battiers at Tottenham Hale on my way from Stockport to Cambridge)

JB_B · 12 Nov 2019

plugwash said:
In my experiance break of journey with paper tickets often requires manual intervention too. Heck even changing trains sometimes does if you take an unusual route (most recently for me was having to be manually let through the NR battiers at Tottenham Hale on my way from Stockport to Cambridge)

Absolutely - magstripe isn't perfect (and could never be perfect given the inherent limitations of the technology - even if it were encoded/programmed correctly). However my success rate - particularly on more "vanilla" routeings - isn't too bad. It's annoying to have to queue for the conversation at the manual barrier.

ThisIsSurbiton · 13 Nov 2019

BlueFox said:
There's no need to go to the expense of setting up a SSL certificate for something that looks like it's never been officially made public and doesn't take users' data.

As there is now no expense at all, this seems bizarre. As you said, browsers and search engines are beginning to prefer secure connections and it won't be long before they go further than that. The days of only using TLS for logging in and payment have of course long gone in most industries, and you have the advantage of knowing that your page was not altered on its way to you. Anyway, it is a live site, as strange as that may seem! It was last mentioned in connection with Smart Week, which seems to have passed without too much notice last month. I think with some integration work still to do to make cards work between TOCs, it was perhaps a little early.

National Rail - Smart Ticketing website (Swan Song for paper tickets)

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