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Paperless rail tickets across UK by 2019 - Chris Grayling

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thenorthern

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Just seen this on BBC News:

Paperless rail tickets across UK by 2019 - Chris Grayling

Plans to replace paper tickets on UK trains are to be accelerated, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has said.

Passengers will be able to use mobile phones and smartcards to travel across most of the network by the end of 2018, he told the Conservative conference.
People "want smart ticketing and we will deliver it"," he said.

Defending the government's rail investment plans, he said all trains in the north of England would either be revamped or replaced by 2020.

And he said the Conservatives - who have been accused of short-changing the north - had electrified four times more of the rail network in the north-west in seven years in power than Labour had done in 13 years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41475478

I am not sure that I would want to rely on mobile tickets entirely as mobiles have a habit of crashing, not having signal or running out of battery but I think I could work with a smart card ticket.
 
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yorksrob

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I can think of better, more useful things to spend £80m on.

I notice in his little rant about BR, Grayling forgets to mention how much they actually managed to electrify, particularly compared to the privatisation era.
 

hawk1911

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Just seen this on BBC News:



I am not sure that I would want to rely on mobile tickets entirely as mobiles have a habit of crashing, not having signal or running out of battery but I think I could work with a smart card ticket.

Agree. However, given how long its taken the 'Get Me There' card to work on the trams, let alone the trains, in Manchester, 2018 seems wildly optimistic.

Unless, by 'most of the network' he means London of course.
 

ainsworth74

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Personally I quite like having tickets on my phone so I have no problem with rolling it out wider.
 

Starmill

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It will save money overall by allowing ticket office closures and reduced TVM numbers.

This doesn't seem likely. For a start, Smartcards will require more ticket machines not fewer. And where might ticket offices be closed? And is that really useful or desirable?
 

Gareth Marston

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I'm sure it will be popular with the over 60's......a vote winner........in the real world passengers overwhelmingly want more customer service/ staff presence.

Cutting frontline customer facing staff is never going to bring costs down whilst there's so much profligacy in so many areas.
 

johntea

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Personally I quite like having tickets on my phone so I have no problem with rolling it out wider.

I don’t have an issue with it myself as such, but it isn’t ideal if you’ve been out all day then have a long trip back on a service with no power outlets! I realise new stock etc but 2019 is super ambitious!

Then even if they do have power outlets what if the train is so busy that you’re standing in the middle with a dead phone ‘tickets please’ ‘sorry I do have a ticket but can’t show you until I get chance to sit down and juice up!’

Point in case I was at Leeds the other day and had to stand in the entrance to the platform side gents for 10 minutes as it was the only wall socket I could find near my departure platform :lol: (I had managed to make it through the barriers just about!)

Phones will one day have super batteries but it’ll be a while yet, my iPhone 6 Plus now struggles to get through a day on a full charge, yes carry around an emergency charger and the like but it can be easy to forget to pick it up (or remember to charge that in itself!)
 

Blindtraveler

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UK wide smart ticketing will only work with a UK wide smartcard. The chaos caused by every opperater having their own is bad enough now but hypotheticaly what happens for someone traveling for example from Dingwall to Dover? Will they need smartcards for Scotrail, West Coast and SET to do this?
 

Llanigraham

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I don't believe a word Grayling says!
And remember this is just a speech to his fawning friends.
 

Dent

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Is any effort going to be put into genuine standardisation so that these "smart" options can be bought from any retailer and used seamlessly with all operators?

If not then this basically spells the end of integrated ticketing, with a separate system with it's own card/app being required for each operator. This would be massive retrograde step for public transport.
 

johntea

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Thinking about it what are the logistics around linking ticketing directly to credit / debit cards? As I would have my physical ones or my Apple Pay digital ones then.

I think Oyster has done it from my last visit to London although from what I remember then for some reason it treated the physical debit card as a seperate payment to the Apple Pay one even though it was the same bank account!
 

jon0844

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Phones will one day have super batteries but it’ll be a while yet, my iPhone 6 Plus now struggles to get through a day on a full charge, yes carry around an emergency charger and the like but it can be easy to forget to pick it up (or remember to charge that in itself!)

To be fair, just because Apple hasn't built a device with a large battery (I think even the iPhone 8 Plus only has a 2691mAh battery) there are plenty of phones with 3000+. I have a phone with 4000mAh and there are phones with 5100mAh and even 7000mAh. And the latter isn't extra chunky.

I get that Apple optimises things very well to maximise the battery performance, but there's only so far you can go with that. Bright screen, heavy GPU usage (gaming etc) and you can't compensate for the lack of battery capacity.

I think more and more people are taking this into account when choosing a phone, but I do wish the flagship manufacturers would stop trying to get ever thinner and lighter. People rely on their phones and the phones with the best performance often come with rather pathetic batteries and the marketing hype that they can be quick charged, so it doesn't matter.

I want fast charging AND a big battery. Thankfully I can have that by shopping around.
 

radamfi

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Just seen this on BBC News:

Presumably this doesn't really mean that paper tickets will no longer be available, but mobile or smartcard tickets will be available more widely. Most of our neighbouring countries now offer all or nearly all tickets as a mobile ticket, and in some cases for many years. However, nowhere, as far as I know, has withdrawn paper tickets, unless you count the Netherlands replacing their paper tickets with single use smartcards.

The Deutsche Bahn app now offers local tickets in most areas of Germany as well, so you can get a through bus-train-bus ticket direct from the same app as you get a long distance ICE ticket from.
 

thedbdiboy

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This doesn't seem likely. For a start, Smartcards will require more ticket machines not fewer. And where might ticket offices be closed? And is that really useful or desirable?

It's smart ticketing, not necessarily smartcards. Ideally you won't ever have to go near a TVM again, your 'ticket' is captured by your device.

BTW this is an already extant project, it's the usual political approach of 'announcing' the same thing again
 

Joe Paxton

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It's smart ticketing, not necessarily smartcards. Ideally you won't ever have to go near a TVM again, your 'ticket' is captured by your device.

BTW this is an already extant project, it's the usual political approach of 'announcing' the same thing again

What's the chances of it all actually working?
 

Joe Paxton

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Do mobile tickets work in other European countries?

Yes, but we're here! It needs to work not just in theory but in practice.

The 'ITSO smartcard revolution' on the railways in recent years is perhaps an indication of how things might work out...
 

Via Bank

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I can think of better, more useful things to spend £80m on.

If it avoids losing spontaneous custom to other means of transport where you don't have to go through a convoluted and confusing ticket-buying process, I'm all for it.

Consider: if I had the choice of the train and a car, I'd be less likely to pick the car if I didn't have to factor in time spent queueing at a ticket machine or a ticket office before I board.
 

Via Bank

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Do mobile tickets work in other European countries?

From my experiences with the Deutsche Bahn and SBB systems, yes. Easy to pay, the ticket downloads to my iPhone's Wallet so it automatically illuminates, and god forbid, if I lost my phone, I could download the passes onto a replacement phone from a backup.
 

Starmill

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It's smart ticketing, not necessarily smartcards. Ideally you won't ever have to go near a TVM again, your 'ticket' is captured by your device.

Smartcards are specifically referenced in the speech! The only other thing that's referenced is smartphone m-tickets, which by themselves obviously won't replace paper tickets.
 

Dent

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If it avoids losing spontaneous custom to other means of transport where you don't have to go through a convoluted and confusing ticket-buying process, I'm all for it.

Consider: if I had the choice of the train and a car, I'd be less likely to pick the car if I didn't have to factor in time spent queueing at a ticket machine or a ticket office before I board.

Isn't replacing integrated ticketing with incompatible, operator specific systems for each operator likely to cause the loss of spontaneous custom to other means of transport?

Going to any ticket office or any ticket-selling website and buying one ticket for the whole journey can easily be done spontaneously. Researching each operator you will use and how each of their systems work, registering a separate account with each one, then applying for - and waiting for delivery of - a separate smart card for each one is a lot more onerous.
 

radamfi

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Isn't replacing integrated ticketing with incompatible, operator specific systems for each operator likely to cause the loss of spontaneous custom to other means of transport?

There is no need for this to be the case. Britain is not alone in having multiple train operators in the country. For example, the DB app enables you to buy a train ticket from any station to any other station in Germany, and to certain places in other countries as well. Germany has several private operators running regional services.
 

jon0844

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And you COULD solve the smartcard system, given they're all ITSO compliant, if you had the will to do so.

It should be possible to load a ticket on any ITSO card, irrespective of what TOC issued it.

I think the DfT should have managed this from day one, and perhaps it will take ownership and work to doing what should have been done from the start.

But delivering tickets securely to a phone is a perfectly good alternative, or even to run alongside smartcards - thus giving people choice. As not everyone has a smartphone, you can't solely rely on mobile tickets.
 

radamfi

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And you COULD solve the smartcard system, given they're all ITSO compliant, if you had the will to do so.

When the Dutch OV-Chipkaart started, there were some private companies who weren't particularly interested. So the government made acceptance mandatory.
 

MikeWh

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I think Oyster has done it from my last visit to London although from what I remember then for some reason it treated the physical debit card as a seperate payment to the Apple Pay one even though it was the same bank account!

It will. It identifies each physical card/device separately. This is good though. It means that you can use your applepay while your partner uses your card. It also means that authorised user credit cards can be used by both people even if they both have the same 16-digit account number (as Tesco issues them).
 

Dent

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There is no need for this to be the case. Britain is not alone in having multiple train operators in the country. For example, the DB app enables you to buy a train ticket from any station to any other station in Germany, and to certain places in other countries as well. Germany has several private operators running regional services.

It doesn't have to be the case, but the fact remains that what is being created is incompatible, operator-specific systems.

I have not seen any plans announced to scrap all these systems and create one standard system, indeed even more incompatible systems are still being created.
 

Gareth Marston

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It doesn't have to be the case, but the fact remains that what is being created is incompatible, operator-specific systems.

I have not seen any plans announced to scrap all these systems and create one standard system, indeed even more incompatible systems are still being created.

Indeed more fragmentation, more confusion, more working against each other as company A etc feels its not incentivized to do it etc
 
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