The death of Orange Card

[Cudzoziemiec]

...has been predicted for 2020.

Paper tickets for travel on the railroad will be phased out by 2020 with passengers paying instead by their mobile phones or smart card.

Patrick McLoughlin, the Transport Secretary, said the move away from printed tickets was necessary to make trains more accessible and allow passengers greater flexibility.

Although it goes on to say:

In future, passengers will also be able to use their phones to make purchases and retain their ticket on their mobile device, as they can for air travel. Paper tickets, which have been used on the railways for 170 years, would be gradually phased out.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/11458358/Patrick-McLoughlin-paper-tickets-will-be-phased-out-by-2020.html

Seems a little confused. Will printed tickets be gone by 2020 or will they start getting rid of them from 2020? And are they actually talking about tickets, as in proof of purchase, or the purchase itself? (Not to mention whether any government announcement made two months before a general election will still be valid after it, let alone after another whole parliamentary cycle.)

[Mr Larrington]

Never mind orl dat, did Rosa Prince really say "travel on the railroad"?

(Checks)

Why, yes!  Yes, she did.

To the camps with her.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Not only that, but someone at the Telegraph wrote 'flexible fairs'. Which presumably refers to acrobats in the circus.

Edit: It always used to be the Grauniad that was the goto paper for typos, cupertinos and other errors. It's good to see the Telegraph also taking more of an equal-opportunities approach to words. 

[perpetual dan]

The railroad was my first reaction too
My second was that I'm pretty wary of putting myself in a situation where a flat battery causes either stopping at the next change of train or creates tension with the guard. Especially as I'm prone to kill my battery with twitter, or some such, on a long journey. On whatever my credit card has evolved into by then makes more sense to me.

[ian]

I think credit cards will have evolved into your phone (or watch, or cerebral implant, or whatever) by then.

[caerau]

What will the iron horse have evolved into? 

[Jaded]

An alloy and plastic horse.

[fuaran]

I think a few train companies already have tickets on your phone.
eg Virgin Trains have m-tickets, which uses an app on your phone. Though presumably that app is specific to Virgin. And it probably won't get you through the ticket barriers automatically.

[jsabine]

I imagine the app can get you through ticket barriers with barcode readers - they are beginning to creep into some stations, as that's how print-at-home tickets tend to let you through.

[Pancho]

See my other comment about London buses. It's going to be very difficult to be a luddite soon. Impossible, maybe. What happens then?

[Kim]

See my other comment about London buses. It's going to be very difficult to be a luddite soon. Impossible, maybe. What happens then?

The luddites stay at home and winge about it on the internet.  Everything else carries on regardless.

[Basil]

^ 

[Polar Bear]

I remember the prediction of the cashless society, of abolition of cheques, of utopia...

The reality is that they will have to provide for those of us who are not glued to our smartphones 36 hours a day, 9 days a week, 65 weeks a year.   

Imagine how life will come to an abrupt end when the oil runs out...   

[Cudzoziemiec]

I think a few train companies already have tickets on your phone.
eg Virgin Trains have m-tickets, which uses an app on your phone. Though presumably that app is specific to Virgin. And it probably won't get you through the ticket barriers automatically.

National Express coaches have had that for at least five years, probably ten. Though it's nothing special, just a text message, so doesn't need a smart phone; and also doesn't need to get you through any machine-reading barriers, just be readable to the driver's mk1 eyeball (or mk2 if he wears glasses!)

[Kim]

I remember the prediction of the cashless society, of abolition of cheques, of utopia...

Yeah, but that's more or less already happened.  I struggle to remember when I last used cash for anything more than a fiver, and I'd have to refer to the audax calendar to work out when I last used a cheque.

The reality is that they will have to provide for those of us who are not glued to our smartphones 36 hours a day, 9 days a week, 65 weeks a year.   

No they won't, because 'they' have all the money.

Imagine how life will come to an abrupt end when the oil runs out...   

It won't be that abrupt.  The oil will get *extremely* expensive first.  With hilarious consequences.



Anyway, back to the matter in hand, wouldn't they be better off working out how to print all the details of a journey onto a single piece of orange cardboard first?   

[Wowbagger]

If our last journey is anything to go by, we are going to have to buy another 17 mobile phones.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Anyway, back to the matter in hand, wouldn't they be better off working out how to print all the details of a journey onto a single piece of orange cardboard first?   

You can imagine how it will work: the barriers will be clogged with people looking for the right e-ticket on their phone.

[Cudzoziemiec]

It occurs to me there might be some other motivation to this move, assuming the story is even correct. It's not printed tickets they want to get rid of - after all, if the cost of card and printing were really important, they would have found a way to reduce it already, as Kim says. If all purchases are electronic, whether that's online or from machines, the TOCs can make redundant all the expensive staff on the ticket windows. Perhaps keep one person in a travel centre at each major station to handle international sales and Polar Bear. Efficiencies, inni'.

[Polar Bear]

I use cash on a day-to-day basis, perhaps as little as 90% of all my transactions are in cash.  Some folk have gone soul cashless but others are still heavy users of cash. 

The trouble with a technological solution is that when technology fails, which it invariably does from time to time, if you don't want meltdown or gridlock then you have to be able to accommodate cash.   I'm awaiting with interest the day that the contactless system fails to work on London Underground just as there was the week where some banks couldn't dispense cash via ATM's.   As sure as eggs is eggs there will be glitches and there will be a dawning realisation that you actually need a fallback position.

Once upon a time there was a pensioner queue in the Post Office every Monday (or was it Tuesday?) drawing pensions and putting money into savings and current accounts as well as taking some cash for the week.   Now they go to the bank on Monday (or is it Tuesday?) to withdraw cash to last them the week.   One routine replaced with another.  There is a nice little Community wholefood shop every Thursday in Rugby.   One can stand near the bus drop off in the centre of town and watch as the pensioners alight, fan out to various banks and building societies to collect their wonga, then re-converge on Dave's shop.   It's quite a sight!   

[hellymedic]

Orange Cardboard is useful as a potential disposable pass at a gateline.

I really don't want to faff with anything precious at this point; neither smartphones, nor contactless bank cards, nor Big Cash.

I am happy with Orange Cardboard, Oyster Cards and the dumbphone round my neck.

But I said similar elsewhere.

Anyway, printout from etickets are big & bulky.

I couldn't/didn't auto check-in for a recent flight because I had no easy printer access.

[Polar Bear]

And I'm not leaving my phone attached to my bike as required with orange cardboard for some train bookings...   

[Mr Larrington]

See my other comment about London buses. It's going to be very difficult to be a luddite soon. Impossible, maybe. What happens then?

You eschew moaning about SCIENCE on teh Anbaric Intarwebs and instead inscribe your grumbles onto a clay tablet?

[ian]

I couldn't/didn't auto check-in for a recent flight because I had no easy printer access.

You don't need to print them unless you're going straight through security.

Things always change. Physical cash is legacy as are paper tickets. Smart devices are steaming, if you'll forgive the anachronism, towards ubiquity. Personally, I'll be happy to get rid of the overstuffed wallet and faffing around with coins and cards. It's all data.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'm not convinced by that. Tickets are not so much data as a record of data, and cash is not so much data as a physical representation of it. Their tangibility, independence of power and immutability make them a useful fall back for black outs and disasters, as well as for luddites. More importantly, smart devices might be near ubiquitous among Western adults, but what about children, the elderly and FORINERS? It'll need some new form of barrier interface, too - though I guess that could easily be done by barriers communicating with smart phones/watches/etc.

Mostly though, I'm not convinced yet that's what it's actually about.

[Polar Bear]

Very good point Cudzo.

When I worked for a $MegChavSpivsterRetailer I did my thrice yearly duty in a store to 'keep in touch'.   On the Customer Service desk an elderly lady asked if there was a smaller version of the catalogue for her to carry home.   The helpful yoof told the lady that she could browse everything on the internet.   That's handy said the elderly lady, do you sell internets?