... prior to starting your trip, you would buy a ticket over the internet, so there’s
0) buy ticket before travelling: cost (per Brfares.com) may be £12 or more.
So passengers who currently plan their travel in advance will see virtually no change - they will still pre-book their ticket but instead of getting a ticket or email to show they will have to bring and show their credit card.
How does that work when buying tickets for others, including children? Currently I often buy tickets online for me, my spouse, and our children (who don't have payment cards). I collect paper tickets from a machine, then when going through ticket barriers at, say, Leeds, I hand them out and each person presents their own ticket separately.
Would I need to get ITSO cards for the children, and then when buying tickets type in the children's card numbers, so the tickets can be loaded to their individual cards?
And how would I identify which ticket is loaded on to my credit card and which my spouse's? My spouse's is a second card on my account, and both cards have the same number. (None of us own smartphones.)
Currently I can go to a ticket machine and collect everybody's paper tickets. If using ITSO cards or contactless payment cards, would I need to have everybody else's cards on me? That would be inconvenient if, say, I'm trying to load tickets for tomorrow while my spouse and children are currently on a day trip, using their cards.
Maybe we can get round that by having multiple ITSO cards per child. But that's added complexity to have to deal with. I reckon at the moment I already mess up ticket buying once to twice a month (buying a combination of tickets that are valid but are more expensive than some other combination that I could've legitimately chosen), and any complexity in non-paper tickets is only going to make that worse.
Why not simply load the tickets on to the cards when arriving at the start of our journey? Because the ITSO machines are Ilkley are near the ticket office on platform 1. We live near the station entrance that goes straight to platform 2, from where most Leeds trains we catch depart. Having to walk along the entire length of platform 2 (past our train), round to the ticket machines, and back to the train more than doubles the walking distance from our front gate — and is particularly inconvenient when travelling with small children and a week's worth of luggage (as we sometimes do).
And don't think of putting a ticket barrier across Ilkley's platform 2 entrance — it's also the pedestrian route for people who live that side of town to, say, the Post Office (in the station building). Maybe Northern could put a ticket machine near the platform 2 entrance, but would they actually bother? Is there a suitable electrical supply and data connection there?
You mention buying tickets online. What about for tickets that can't be bought online and I currently buy in person at a ticket office? For instance if I'm joining the rest of the family partway through a journey using a Family Railcard, I need a Railcard-discounted ticket from the intermediate station, which websites won't sell unless I also buy a child ticket from the same starting point.
And there's those complicated childcare-handover journeys, where the children sometimes travel one way or part of a journey with me and the rest with my spouse. Often these handovers involve swapping our shared MCard (West Yorkshire Metro; it's allowed to share a monthly zone pass thingy) in the opposite direction to the children. Could the sharing of an MCard pass be done virtually between our credit cards?
If not, and we still have a physical MCard, what happens for situations where I currently buy a paper ticket to an intermediate station, where my spouse will board and hand me our MCard to cover the remaining part? I touch in at the origin station and then need to touch out while on the train at the intermediate station?
What about a family day rover ticket? Currently that's one piece of card I show to staff at a ticket barrier and somebody holds a gate open to let all of us through. If that's just loaded to my credit card, will the barriers stay open long enough for us all to make it? Or will staff have to check that my credit card has a family ticket on it? However they do that sounds slower than just looking at a printed ticket.
I'd love not to need to buy paper tickets (especially if there's some kind of carnet system for part-time workers, where a season ticket isn't worth it), but I can't see how using payment cards and internet booking can replace everything we currently do without making things even more complicated.