Families/groups travelling on mobile/e tickets

I'm finding the implementation of mobile/e tickets a bit of a pain in many cases, for example

• some apps such as Greater Anglia require each out and return to be downloaded and activated separately (also annoying for day return tickets for a single adult)
• Very slow to go in and out for each ticket
• No link to the railcard app to show a digital railcard
• Painfully slow at barriers as have to go in several times, and often can't just use the same barcode multiple times, or swipe side to side to allow multiple people through the barriers.

Having been on some European trains recently:

• IsThe German DB have a single barcode that covers all passengers and reservations
• The DB app has a button to show the BahnCard - granted this would have to open another app in the UK, but no reason why it can't be done, and also select the right railcard.
• The Dutch NS app it's easy to swipe side to side to scan other people in the group through the barriers.

UK tickets have a field for the number of adults and children. Usually they are only 1. Why can't this field be used for multiple passengers on the same ticket? Are there any other ways of improving the download and sharing of the tickets. e.g. with paper tickets can give each person the ticket to let themselves through the barriers, whereas with mobile tickets that are all on a single device of the lead passenger. Are there any ways to get the usability to be improved?

smsm1 said:

I'm finding the implementation of mobile/e tickets a bit of a pain in many cases, for example

• some apps such as Greater Anglia require each out and return to be downloaded and activated separately (also annoying for day return tickets for a single adult)

Click to expand...

This only applies to m-tickets, which is not the new common standard.

I understand Greater Anglia's pricing department prefers m-tickets, but they lost the argument, and everyone else issues e-tickets. In my opinion, m-tickets should be scrapped immediately.

smsm1 said:

• Painfully slow at barriers as have to go in several times, and often can't just use the same barcode multiple times, or swipe side to side to allow multiple people through the barriers.

Click to expand...

Proper e-tickets seem to be quick to use at gatelines in my experience, and each member of the group should get their own barcode, so in most cases this should speed things uo.

Some train companies, such as Scotrail, want the entire group to have one barcode, which is problematical (see https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...ld-be-issued-for-a-group.195575/#post-4301527 )

smsm1 said:

UK tickets have a field for the number of adults and children. Usually they are only 1. Why can't this field be used for multiple passengers on the same ticket?

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It can be! And if it is, each passenger should get their own barcode.

However some rogue companies such as Scotrail and EMR have ticket types that use incorrect data, which means people cannot buy some group products online and cannot use their own barcode.

What's needed is for an organisation with some actual powers to just tell the likes of Scotrail, Greater Anglia etc that they need to adhere to the proper standards. But there is no organisation that is both willing and able to actually do that!

Since I found out about this from this forum, I think this is one of the worst customer disservice moves NS Rail has done. They don't subject rail passengers in the Netherlands to this. The UK regulator is letting them eat the cheese off their bread!

ashkeba said:

Since I found out about this from this forum, I think this is one of the worst customer disservice moves NS Rail has done. They don't subject rail passengers in the Netherlands to this. The UK regulator is letting them eat the cheese off their bread!

Click to expand...

From my trip to The Netherlands last week it would appear that everyone has an OV-chipkaart which is a great solution when you run services that don't require reservations.

I booked return e-tickets with West Midlands Railway for a group of 5 adults a few weeks ago, which were sent by email as 10 separate PDF attachments, making them a pain to print off quickly (and a lot of paper waste as I couldn’t easily print them 2-up, or double-side etc.)

Sharing them digitally would have been another option, but the format makes them a pain to divide up, make sure you don’t send the same ticket to 2 people by mistake and so on.