Public Transport in your particular part of the region

[WillPS]

It's funny how little the tickets which some of these machines are printing represent the official 'standard' now. One of the points of this exercise was to standardise the presentation of tickets to make frauds harder to spot. It seems as of the present moment none of the ticket machines have managed to print a circle or diamond in the top row, and I'm told if you collect tickets from a machine manufactured by Parkeon no railcard information is printed at all!

I'm not a fan, the weird spacing between the lines makes it harder to read and looks like a fake ticket. It might be just because its a change that needs getting used to, but it seems like dumbing down, people can't understand tickets with codes etc so print entire sentances in the plainest of English possible instead.

The ticket also now incorporating the reservation coupon on the same ticket is also a feature.

It may just be getting used to, the old design has been basically unchanged since APTIS was introduced in the mid-80's. With this change, one of the last vestiges of BR branding will also go - to this day tickets with Network Railcard discounts have 'NSE' on them, a throwback to when the railcard was first introduced by Network SouthEast. I do think it a bit odd though that the clearest part of the ticket is the text saying 'Adult Standard Class with Devon and Cornwall Railcard' - I already know that, it's what I either asked for at the ticket office or selected on the ticket machine, that information is only useful for the guard checking tickets who should reasonably be expected to be able to quickly decipher the information on the old ticket.

Because the primary function of the ticket has to be that it can easily be read by an inspector - they need to see stations, ticket type, adult/child/railcard.

It is useful to do away with the separate reservation coupon for seat reservations, but I've not seen a ticket with that built in yet. On that subject - is it only me who thinks the customer should be asked whether they want a reservation rather than being forced into it? Frequently work book me open return tickets which come with reservations because they're booked in advance when I have no intention of travelling on the trains I have a reservation on. I do feel guilty that on a busy service some poor sod could be standing rather than occupy my reserved seat when I'm not even on the train. Going off on a further tangent, Crosscountry's policy of continuing to book seat reservations on trains already in service really irks me too - you can be travelling in an unreserved seat and then have that seat booked from under you whilst you're sitting in it - surely it's reasonable that if the passenger isn't organised enough to book their ticket before the train departs then they should have to take their chances on getting a seat on that train and not be able to turf someone out who's already sat down?

It's only on certain seats "this seat may be reserved" - you can always book the seat yourself as well. I find their inexplicable policy of trying to enforce reservations when the reservation system has broken (and no tickets have been printed) to be far stupider.

[Alexia]

It seemed that the easiest thing was to redesign the tickets rather horribly than try and educate the travelling public what the markings on their ticket meant.

[cwathen]

It seemed that the easiest thing was to redesign the tickets rather horribly than try and educate the travelling public what the markings on their ticket meant.

National Rail Enquiries has a section on their website about this (still in the old design at present). The kind of travelling public who seriously struggle with rail tickets though I doubt will find these any easier to deal with - they are the sort of people who will look at the departure boards, see 'Plymouth - Platform 2', go to platform 2, read the next train indicator on platform 2 saying 'Plymouth', listen to the automated announcement saying that the train on platform 2 goes to Plymouth, and read 'Plymouth' on the front of the train yet still feel the need to ask the dispatcher 'Is that the train to Plymouth?' before feeling comfortable boarding it.

It's funny how little the tickets which some of these machines are printing represent the official 'standard' now. One of the points of this exercise was to standardise the presentation of tickets to make frauds harder to spot. It seems as of the present moment none of the ticket machines have managed to print a circle or diamond in the top row, and I'm told if you collect tickets from a machine manufactured by Parkeon no railcard information is printed at all!

How will redesigning the formatting of the ticket help prevent fraud? They're still being printed on the same stock using the same equipment. There are many different printing mechanisms in use which all vary in quality and have detail differences so tickets do look different as you say. Redesigning the ticket does nothing to change that.

If you have access to legitimate stock (or a decent copy of it) and a thermal printer you can just as easily knock up a passable ticket using the new design. Paper rail tickets essentially have no workable security - no one is seriously going to check the number to see if the ticket is valid unless they have some other reason to believe it might be fake (and do staff on the ground have a way of verifying the numbers anyway?), and whilst fakes would get caught out at ticket barriers, all that ever happens when a barrier bleeps is the gateline staff examine it and then open the gate. Even the few overzealous types who check the fault code on the barrier are only really looking for the code that indicates the ticket has been through before, I can't see serious challenge on an unprogrammed ticket, especially when that seems to be a problem anyway - I usually end up with a few tickets per month which set the barrier off for no reason, I've never had any challenge on it.

All of that said, are fake tickets really a big problem on the railway? I know there is talk of eventually moving away from paper tickets to smartcards to combat fraud, but will the investment really save more revenue than it costs?

[Andrew]

It is useful to do away with the separate reservation coupon for seat reservations, but I've not seen a ticket with that built in yet.

I've got one here from a couple of weeks ago, it will have been issued by whatever machines Arriva Trains Wales have.

[WillPS]

It's funny how little the tickets which some of these machines are printing represent the official 'standard' now. One of the points of this exercise was to standardise the presentation of tickets to make frauds harder to spot. It seems as of the present moment none of the ticket machines have managed to print a circle or diamond in the top row, and I'm told if you collect tickets from a machine manufactured by Parkeon no railcard information is printed at all!

How will redesigning the formatting of the ticket help prevent fraud? They're still being printed on the same stock using the same equipment. There are many different printing mechanisms in use which all vary in quality and have detail differences so tickets do look different as you say. Redesigning the ticket does nothing to change that.

If you have access to legitimate stock (or a decent copy of it) and a thermal printer you can just as easily knock up a passable ticket using the new design. Paper rail tickets essentially have no workable security - no one is seriously going to check the number to see if the ticket is valid unless they have some other reason to believe it might be fake (and do staff on the ground have a way of verifying the numbers anyway?), and whilst fakes would get caught out at ticket barriers, all that ever happens when a barrier bleeps is the gateline staff examine it and then open the gate. Even the few overzealous types who check the fault code on the barrier are only really looking for the code that indicates the ticket has been through before, I can't see serious challenge on an unprogrammed ticket, especially when that seems to be a problem anyway - I usually end up with a few tickets per month which set the barrier off for no reason, I've never had any challenge on it.

Part of the specification was that tickets should be printed in Rail Alphabet. One of the problems at the moment is that there are so many variations that if you print something vaguely resembling a ticket (particularly if you have the correct stock) it'll get passed. The more you standardise the design the easier it will be for staff to pick up on discrepancies. It seems this particular element of the redesign has fallen by the wayside though in a typical ATOC fudge.

The mag stripe isn't failsafe at all. Plenty of times I've had a paper TfL travelcard which has died on its arse halfway through the day's use. Some TOCs now print a 3D barcode which stands a much better chance of being useful. I'm lead to believe the new mobile ticket sales equipment will do more in this regard. They'll also be able to process transactions online, like it's 2003.

All of that said, are fake tickets really a big problem on the railway? I know there is talk of eventually moving away from paper tickets to smartcards to combat fraud, but will the investment really save more revenue than it costs?

Yes. There are (apparently) factories in Romania churning fake season tickets out. Obviously this type of fraud is a bit more sophisticated than a standardised font will be able to defeat.

I don't think ITSO based smartcards will ever be able to fully replace paper based tickets. How will split ticketing work, without forcing the passenger to alight at their split point, for one?

[Pete]

Course one could argue that split ticketing shouldn't be a thing, because it makes no logical sense

[WillPS]

Course one could argue that split ticketing shouldn't be a thing, because it makes no logical sense

What doesn't make sense is that a ticket from A to C costs more than a ticket from A to B and B to C; but we're so far down the road of having no uniform pricing policy that any attempt to sort it out would cause chaos.

[cwathen]

It is useful to do away with the separate reservation coupon for seat reservations, but I've not seen a ticket with that built in yet.

I've got one here from a couple of weeks ago, it will have been issued by whatever machines Arriva Trains Wales have.

Found another oddity with this then - picked up some tickets from Torquay this morning which work booked for me, got a new style ticket but old style separate reservation coupons. It was an open return ticket so not tied to any particular train (and as usual, I am not travelling on the booked services and did not require a seat reservation but I'm forced into having one) but I would have thought it makes logical sense to still print the seat reservations on that ticket as with your example rather than continue to dish out separate coupons in this case, unless it's just a transitional issue.

Moving away from the issues of industrial action and train ticket redesign...where is GWR? I thought the rebrand was September. Granted, no one ever said it would be on the 1st of September, but apart from a couple of repainted trains and the placeholder website with nothing on it there's nothing to indicate that it's coming at all nor has a start even been made in getting rid of the FGW name, This is not like when Wessex went, their brand name was being erased from trains and stations even before their franchise officially ended and there was plenty of information on posters and the FGW customer rag of the time about the new franchise that would be starting.

This might be a bit different in that it is only a rebranding rather than a new company taking over, but it does seem odd that there is no clear launch date or prep work being done for something which apparently is happening this month.

[iSon]

...where is GWR?

Cancelled due to industrial action.

[Alexia]

20th September.

https://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/-/m ... .pdf?la=en

[bbcnewsfix]

Sorry but is GWR a new thing, that is separate from FGW? Or is it a rebranded FGW?