'Popular destinations' question - South Merton to Cambridge

[NSE]

Hi all,

Just a general ticketing wonder really. I regularly use South Merton station and have often bought tickets from Cambridge and St. Neots to South Merton. At the ticket machine at SM, it has a 'home screen' (I don't know ticketing systems so apologies for my rudimentary terminology) that offers a sort of 'quick select' for the most popular destinations/ticket types. As such it offers a couple of travelcard options, tickets to Sutton, Wimbledon, Streatham I think, and a few others. All make sense. But it also offers a return to Cambridge. Now I'd imagine most users of SM use oyster/contactless/travel cards and there can't be many that buy paper tickets to Cambridge from there. So I wondered, does the system 'remember' popular destinations and put them up for easy access? And by popular I just wondered if my ticket purchases my have influenced that? I only ask as (I'd imagine) most people don't buy a paper ticket for travel to and from SM so even though it's a small number of people who do buy a paper ticket, I may form a noticeable proportion of tickets there? This is purely out of interest as I use SM now virtually everyday at some point and see the option for a ticket to Cambridge.

 

[pemma]

I've noticed Sheffield appear as a popular destination on the TVM at Northwich (Cheshire) and wondered if it means popular destinations (from all tickets sold) or popular recent destinations.

 

[NSE]

Yeah thats kinda what I was thinking. I mean plenty of people buy travel cards, but (purely for arguments sake) if one hundred and ninety seven travel cards are sold, two Cambridge returns and one Wimbledon return are sold, then my two Cambridge tickets are the second most popular choice of ticket sold. Of course theres a massive gulf of the number sold between the first and second choice tickets, but the algorithm would still stick Cambridge on the home screen if thats how it works.