German railway introduces virtual tickets

[sandraoh]

German railway introduces virtual tickets
24/08/2006 - 16:24:41 - breakingnews.ie

Germany’s national railway today launched a service that will allow passengers to buy virtual tickets using their internet-capable mobile phones.

Customers will receive a multimedia message on their mobile phones that will be read by new scanners and serve as a ticket, railway operator Deutsche Bahn said.

Booking via mobile phone is available until 10 minutes before a train’s departure, the company said. Customers will have to register for the service online before buying their first mobile phone ticket.

Deutsche Bahn board member Friedrich Rausch said he expected that the new system will bring the company more passengers, and that it hopefully will appeal to young people and businesspeople.

The railway operator said all train ticket collectors should be equipped with the new scanners by mid-September.

[Mark Gleeson]

IE are looking at print on demand tickets i.e. you use the receipt email you get from the booking as the ticket, in theory it could be implemented instantly once you had photo id to verify you are the ticket holder which in turn means the ticket wasn't copied

[sandraoh]

I remember seeing a news piece a few weeks ago about cinema tickets being sent to people as barcode on their phone. They just had their phones scanned as they were going in to the cinema. I'm assuming that is the kind of system they are looking at in Germany.

[Mark Gleeson]

The Swiss tried this a while back, the message you get has some kind of code which can be verfied

The beauty of the print it yourself is the ticket checker can be handed a sheet of paper listing the numbers before departure, no need for complex electronic toys

[comcor]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

IE are looking at print on demand tickets i.e. you use the receipt email you get from the booking as the ticket, in theory it could be implemented instantly once you had photo id to verify you are the ticket holder which in turn means the ticket wasn't copied

I've used this system in Finland. However, there, the ticket also included your seat number and train, which pretty much guaranteed that nobody else could try to use it if they had the same name. Although, that would require properly implemented seat booking...

Also, when it was checked by the guard, the details were entered into a PDA. I assume that this was able to perform some cross validation between my print out and the IT systems.

[PaulM]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

IE are looking at print on demand tickets i.e. you use the receipt email you get from the booking as the ticket, in theory it could be implemented instantly once you had photo id to verify you are the ticket holder which in turn means the ticket wasn't copied

Surely they could use the card that the ticket was booked with. This would have the name of the person and perhaps the last 4 digits of the card and expiry date.

[Mark]

What if you booked tickets under someone elses credit card tho?

[Mark Gleeson]

Exactly

[ACustomer]

In Portugal (poorest country in the EU prior to the recent Eastern accession states), you can get an Intercity reservation up to 15 minutes prior to departure on any Intercity service, from any ATM if you have a local bank account. This has been available for several years. The Portuguese ATM system (Multibanco) is a single system, and not fragmented by individual bank ownership, and its coverage is extremely comprehensive, so the facility is really useful.

If the poor backward Portuguese (!!) can do it, why can't we?

[Mark Gleeson]

In theory the IE system lets you book to within 1 minute of departure, they can't guarantee your name over the seat below 1 hour though it appears that if your ticket says C33 even without the card in the seat it is yours, however legally the guard cannot evict its occupant since no notice was given that the seat was reserved. In this context great care is warrented with e ticketing systems to make sure they can stand up to the real world

The reservation cards have to be printed and manually inserted current which takes time, the 1 hour window can be drastically reduced on the new Cork Dublin trains since it can download the seat reservation list itself by wifi but that must be done before anyone else can board and people don't like being left in a queue next to a empty train

If you apply a compulsory reservations policy then everyone has a seat and you can dispense with seat reservation cards but that wouldn't work in Ireland since the idea of booking in advance is a completely foreign concept and that there is an assumption that regardless of the event/day etc that a god given right exists for a seat even if you board with 1 minute to go

[PaulM]

Originally Posted by Mark

What if you booked tickets under someone elses credit card tho?

Credit card should be enough. If it's not your card passport or driving license. If you have none of them, buy the ticket at the desk. I see no problem with this system being implemented other that IE are inept.