Train in vain
On Friday, Dr B (who's in charge of such matters) picked up our tickets from York station for two fairly simple return journeys we had booked. Two people, two return journeys. Each trip involved one change of train at Peterborough. Pretty simple stuff.
Now that could be four documents, couldn't it? One ticket per person per return journey, with all the relevant information printed on each. But no. Apparently twenty-five makes more sense.
How utterly absurd is that? The information you need is unnecessarily duplicated and segregated, and some of it is completely useless – we could've done without the two seat reservation tickets that simply said "there are no seat reservations". The whole ticketing system needs a serious rejig, and not just for us travellers, but to make the actual trains and stations more efficient. Imagine how much quicker a ticket inspector could get down a train if every single passenger didn't have to shuffle a deck of cards before finding the right one?
It reminds me of Tyler Thompson's mission to redesign boarding passes to make them useful and readable. Somewhere along the way, ticket designers forgot about humans. No doubt the next step will be to stick a designwart QR code on them just to make the world that little bit more hateful. With the profusion of rail providers, the old system is simply not fit for purpose any more.
One journey, one ticket. How hard is that?
Daniel Gray
An excellent approach to simplifying tickets by Neil Martin, who pragmatically suggest a design that will still work with the existing stockpile of blank tickets:
Daniel Gray
Another great approach by Robert Hempsall, again using the existing tickets. Robert has separated the information for the passenger (larger type) from the information for the ticket inspector (smaller type). You just can't beat a well thought-out hierarchy.
Daniel Gray
Apologies to Peter aka @urbaneprofessor, who posted this comment just as I was switching over to a different commenting system, and got lost between the cracks a little bit:
This is a REAL bug-bear of mine. ATOC got rid of the European style/Boarding pass tickets because of revenue protection - they've now installed ticket gates at so many stations that if they kept the old style tickets (a return journey for two people could be one ticket) then the railway companies would have to employ staff to open the gates for people with the big tickets. However, try using a credit card style ticket for an advanced purchase journey in a gate and it's pretty much guaranteed not to work. So, if you go to a station that's understaffed (Sundays, nights) they usually leave the gates open anyway. Changing the ticket type was just done to increase revenue (marginally) and inconvenience passengers.
/rant over
Daniel Gray
Here's Wallace Henning's approach. It's quite a complex presentation of information, but to get it all onto one ticket is a heck of a challenge! Wallace raises the issue that, if we are to retain the existing blank tickets, then we should be thinking within the constraints of the existing thermal printers too. What is the bottom limit in terms of readable point-size for these? Does anyone know?
Reader Comments (19)
Good point, well made.
There are a raft of problems with the design of the humble train ticket. The one that has always got to me is the lack of any kind of visual difference between tickets with different purposes.
I was traveling in Germany and Austria over the weekend … surprise surprise, their tickets are really clear, although they are much larger than National Rail ones. But you can fold them (there's a feature!).
I also thought this very thing – this was one return journey (well, two single journeys, well, actually, six single journeys as that was the cheapest) for one person a year or so ago.
They did used to have unwieldy boarding pass sized tickets a few years ago for reservations – I'm glad they're not around any more because they were a bit of a pain to fit in wallets and so on.
It would be interesting to think about a redesign within the constraints of assuming the credit card sized ticket is the ideal size (or perhaps a double length ticket that size you could fold), and that they probably have to be printed by a lofi thermal printer.
The Deutsche Bahn tickets are nice and the ticket machines allow you to print a timetable of your specific journey, amazing! See here:
http://www.wallacehenning.com/notes/2011/5/7/deutsche-bahn-ticket-machines.html
I don't think the bigger size of them is that much of a problem, you deal with them like paper money, fold it up or put it in the notes section of your wallet.
The other thing I appreciated, was having a train number. No more looking at the timetable trying to work out which is your train. This number had all the information you needed to reference at stations or on the website.
The French rail system is far from perfect, but the ticket does have the train number on it so you can know exactly which one to get. Plus on a trip with changes, at least two or three legs of the journey can all fit on one ticket, so there's no need for hundreds of separate ones. Same goes for seat reservations.
Twenty-five tickets is just farcical. Waste of resources too. Looks pretty in black and white though...
It's inherently flawed. Just give me one long ticket with a list of my available journeys and a seat number if applicable, you can give me an invoice/receipt separately.
Decided to take a stab at redesigning the ticket to reduce the need for extra tickets. Take a look: The journey to a new train ticket
@Neil
I liked your project, sensible too, by only by carrying on with the current ticket shape and design.
I've been looking at the ticketing on the railways in this country too (well in fact my MA is try and look at the problems we have and try to suggest some improvements). I did one piece a little while ago about taking existing technology and how it could be applied to create a better purchasing system. The result was a large printed poster mapping it all out.
On reflection, I think one way we could improve the journey would be to remove the ticket barriers.
Have you thought about taking your design to the ATOC (Association of Train Operating Companies)?
Very nice indeed. It would be refreshing to receive just one ticket instead of a catalogue.
I hate to turn up and be Mr Grumpy, but a couple of things occur to me.
First of all, I need to say that the redesign is so much better than what currently exists, and getting everything onto a single ticket is a great idea, but...
The emphasis of the information seems to favour the rail staff rather than the customer. For example, the railcard and ticket type are quite large, but as a customer, once I have the ticket in my hand, this information isn't really that important to me.
@Robert
Good point (and debate is welcome here – so don't worry about being grumpy!) – although I would argue that by making the ticket easier to use for the ticket inspectors, the quicker they can deal with you, and the whole system becomes more efficient. Ultimately, it all works in favour of the passenger.
That's a good point made by Robert. I wonder if you could abbreviate the railcard. Maybe with a bit of extra space on ticket, the seat reservations could me made a bit bigger, although it might require some rearrangement.
Hi Wallace. I agree with your points. However, I think it depends on whether you consider customer interaction most important or staff interaction most important. Who looks at the ticket more often and more in depth, I wonder?
Hi Neil
Oh, yes I agree with what you and Daniel are saying about the fact that if the staff can't understand the ticket properly then it has an impact on the passenger. But for example quite often tickets I receive have 'Y–P' as an indication that it requires Young Persons railcard.
I think it's great that people are interested in working out new designs/ideas for improving our public services. It's an area that I think gets over looked sometimes because it's not always that glamorous (and difficult).
Catching the bandwagon on its way back, I've had a go at a redesign too
http://www.roberthempsall.co.uk/uk-train-ticket-redesign/
All thoughts welcome.
Bravo for simplifying train tickets!
A few weeks ago I had to take my bike by train - two trains outbound, one back, for just me & my bike - TWELVE tickets!
@ Robert
Nice design, I really like that you have put the platform numbers on there. I was talking to my Mum yesterday to try and find out the problems she finds with using the train (I thought she would be a good subject as she never uses the interent for train times and of course dosen't have a smartphone), and the one of the first things she said, was not knowing the platfrom number for connections or not knowing if you are on the right part of the train. And she found taking the train off putting due to worrying about missing the connecting train.
I want to have a go at designing a ticket now!
This is a REAL bug-bear of mine. ATOC got rid of the European style/Boarding pass tickets because of revenue protection - they've now installed ticket gates at so many stations that if they kept the old style tickets (a return journey for two people could be one ticket) then the railway companies would have to employ staff to open the gates for people with the big tickets. However, try using a credit card style ticket for an advanced purchase journey in a gate and it's pretty much guaranteed not to work. So, if you go to a station that's understaffed (Sundays, nights) they usually leave the gates open anyway.
Changing the ticket type was just done to increase revenue (marginally) and inconvenience passengers.
/rant over
I had to join in, my design is here.
http://www.wallacehenning.com/notes/2011/6/21/designing-a-new-railway-ticket.html
Would be interested in knowing what you all think about it.