Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

eta.st

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 236 posts

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#151

Post by djhworld »

nly wrote: post #28
nonrandomstring wrote: post #2

Nobody who cheers "mobile tickets" has ever watched a guard or ticket inspector do their job. In the UK, a guard with good eyesight and a sprightly, cheerful manner can almost run through the carriages shouting "tickets please!" and see, with a single glance, all s/he needs. Then she gets to the muppets with phones. They faff, fumble and fuss. They scowl at being interrupted watching videos, browsing social media and…

I feel the same way about people who use mobile phone NFC payment at ticket barriers on the tube instead of a plastic cards (again via NFC) Using your phone is much slower and there's a significant chance it'll just fail and hold up the person behind you (me).

That hasn't been my experience at all, at least in London, UK.

There used to be a time where the oyster card was slightly faster than the phone in terms of registering at the barrier but that's improved a lot over time.

I don't live in London anymore but when I've visited it's been so good just tapping your phone through everything.

Additionally the hold ups at the barriers in my experience are more down to people's misunderstanding of the cadence required between each passenger. This applies to both oyster/card and phone, and is more of a UX problem of the barrier rather than the technology used to activate it

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#152

Post by JamesMcMinn »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #8
scrollaway wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids these days, how dare they use technology, am I right, fellow luddite on the internet? People lose paper tickets. People throw them on the ground. Stations are littered with them. Oh, and people do spend ages looking through their pockets, bags, coats and other places for where their paper ticket is at. You're just being contrarian because you're on a tech website, tbh.

> littered with them. I don't see that. The ticket barriers are programmed to retain used tickets. And please lay-off the "contrarian" slurs, I'm just telling you what I see with my eyes each day. If you looked up from your phone you might notice too :)

ScotRail have started to print tickets with QR codes on them, which unfortunately are an awkward size (far bigger than a credit card, even larger than a £20), come as a single strip without a perforated edge to tear, and are generally very low quality. I full expect these to become a common sight on the ground as they're not eaten by machines and difficult to store even in your wallet.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#153

Post by _dain_ »

intelVISA wrote: post #45
lgeek wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't need to be a phone running iOS and Android, you just need an email client and a PDF viewer for UK train etickets

If that's the case they should be issued free (as in tea in the harbor) open source devices free from Apple/Google spyware for this purpose.

you can use a laptop

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#154

Post by tjoff »

paganel wrote: post #121
erpellan wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A truck can carry 10 or 20 times more cargo than a car. The truck toll is not 20x more. The movement to reduce car use is about replacing them with better alternatives such as efficient local public transport and high speed rail, not going back to travelling on horseback.

> The truck toll is not 20x more. Yes, that was my exact point. The car owners (of which I'm one) subsidise cheaper food for many not car-owners (many of them, presumably, poorer people) by paying more expensive road tolls relative to our vehicles' sizes. And that's good. Make road toll for trucks commensurate to the real wear they're adding to the roads then you're increasing the price of food (by increasing the cos…

That's a very roundabout way to justify it though. How much would toll really affect food prices per person?

And is there really no other way to offset that?

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#156

Post by gambiting »

borski wrote: post #136
Symbiote wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a discussion on a different post pointing out that maintenance of a highway is still very costly. Charging only the users, rather than all taxpayers, appears very fair.

So you never get anything delivered on a FedEx or ups truck? And you don’t receive mail?

Exactly - you benefit from infrastructure existing, even if you personally don't drive on every single road in the country.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#157

Post by realworldperson »

scrollaway wrote: post #4
nonrandomstring wrote: post #2

Nobody who cheers "mobile tickets" has ever watched a guard or ticket inspector do their job. In the UK, a guard with good eyesight and a sprightly, cheerful manner can almost run through the carriages shouting "tickets please!" and see, with a single glance, all s/he needs. Then she gets to the muppets with phones. They faff, fumble and fuss. They scowl at being interrupted watching videos, browsing social media and…

Kids these days, how dare they use technology, am I right, fellow luddite on the internet? People lose paper tickets. People throw them on the ground. Stations are littered with them. Oh, and people do spend ages looking through their pockets, bags, coats and other places for where their paper ticket is at. You're just being contrarian because you're on a tech website, tbh.

[dead]

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#158

Post by lxgr »

bboygravity wrote: post #138
Symbiote wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a discussion on a different post pointing out that maintenance of a highway is still very costly. Charging only the users, rather than all taxpayers, appears very fair.

I've lived in countries with and without toll. I feel the no toll approach is better. Most importantly because no toll means (the feeling of) more privacy, toll means you're being tracked. Regardless of law we all know that everything eveywhere gets stored indefinitely independent of country (if not legally then illegally if not by the toll org then by the secret service). Secondly the country I was in with the toll…

Another option is to just tax fuel, which has the nice side effect of being roughly proportionate to actual road usage and pollution.

Re: Reversing UK mobile rail tickets

#159

Post by lbriner »

plugin-baby wrote: post #126
mnd999 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's still in the conditions of carriage ( https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/National%20Rail%20Conditions%... ) - Section 16. I don't think gate line staff are well trained on stuff like this though.

> You may also end your journey (in either direction in the case of a return Ticket) before the destination shown on the Ticket. TIL, thanks! On a related note, I found out the hard way that (some?) airlines don’t let you use a return flight if you missed the outbound leg.

Yeah, I missed my outbound Air Canada flight at LHR after my coach broke down and when I asked about getting a ticket for a later flight, the rep told me that they "weren't supposed to" sell returns if you weren't planning to use both legs even though they were cheaper than a single but she sold me one anyway, just told me to make-up a return leg and then just don't turn up!

Pretty bad really, I guess an example of where the theory of balancing the numbers doesn't match up with the reality that is obscene that they can gouge you for less service, I think it should ultimately be "admin overhead" + "flight(s)". Most people accept that a single can't always be half of a return but it should always be noticeably cheaper.

Post reply on HN