Do train ticket machines drive you crazy?

I travel by rail once or twice a year and usually at a time when the ticket office is open. Because I so rarely use those overcomplicated ticket machines, find myself totally confuddled by them.

I invariably have to cancel and restart the process several times before I select the right combinations and by that time people are queueing behind me and some kind if slightly impatient person usually does it for me.

And that is on a cheap day return. 😟

My first experience of ticket machines was not good and I was glad that I arrived 20 minutes early. I have not had problems since but prefer to book in advance and have the tickets delivered, which has not failed me and would allow time to sort out the problem if it did.

One of my concerns is that it is necessary to insert the payment card for tickets that are collected at the station. Surely it is possible to devise a secure scheme that could eliminate the need for this.

For long distance journeys, which are generally planned in advance, I buy the tickets on-line and have them sent by first class post. Sometimes I select the option to print off the ticket at home but not all stations have bar code readers so there is then a hold-up at the escape exit barrier.

For local journeys I have learnt how to use the ticket machine and can now get a ticket in under thirty seconds, but there is no doubt it is a fiddly process and can take some passengers a long time to work their way through the screens, sometimes having to go back or start again.

It would be technically possible, presumably, to produce a programme for every station that would offer the best fare for every conceivable journey at any particular time of day according to the routeing guide and the ticket restrictions in force at the date and time of the journey, the class of travel, the status of the passenger [adult, child], the type of railcard to be used, the number travelling [where relevant], the changing points, and so on. I think we would be there all day waiting for this lot to load up and go through its algorithms so the objective of any reform must surely be to make the ticketing and fares structure very much simpler and design easy machines for buying the tickets required.

There will always be a lot of variables with ticket purchase and to assist with that I would suggest that railway travellers, even if they are only occasional passengers, should be able to equip themselves at no cost with a card to use over and over again that skips through a lot of the interrogation by being encoded with most of the standard information. For example, my personal card would contain coding to say adult, standard class, one way, off-peak, senior railcard, today. Inserted into the machine at the outset all I would have to do would be to select the destination, confirm the ticket, and pay. The ticket would give all relevant details of changing points and route options. It seems to be generally agreed that all tickets should be singles [one way] in a simplified system and the single fares reduced to ensure that anomalous return fares are abolished. I would suggest that 90%+ of the people who go anywhere by train come back by train and that it is not worth worrying about the few that don’t. People could have more than one card if they might sometimes want two or more tickets or go in a different class or during a different time period.

Overall I am very happy with the rail system but the ticketing is a bugbear. From our local station we can go to Norwich and beyond in one direction, or to Liverpool without changing, or to London with one change, and to loads of other destinations with just one change on the Liverpool route at Ely, Peterborough, Nottingham, Sheffield, or Manchester. Being on a line that goes right across the country from west to east really is very advantageous for the connexions it offers [so long as time is not the essence of the contract].

It’s high time that mobile ticketing was universal, like it is in many other countries. I should be able to buy a rail ticket online and then show a QR code on my mobile phone in order to travel. Some train companies have introduced this, but many are unreasonably lagging behind. Why we still have to use ticket machines is beyond me.

It should be the responsibility of the railway company to offer only tickets that may be legitimately used on its services. As passengers we may accept the companies’ need to charge more money for services at high-demand times, but we are not here to provide revenue protection for the railway companies. They need to ensure that we get the correct ticket for our journey – customers who feel that they are getting a good deal are more likely to board your trains, and perhaps spend more money with you. Too often the passenger instead has to deal with their corporate arrogance.