Has the idea of doing what the airlines do and have e-tickets been thought of for Amtrak?
I recently flew to Chicago and back and never talked to an agent, except at boarding. I printed my boarding passes on line and walked up to the gate to board.
Would there be inherent problems with letting Amtrak passengers print their own tickets on-line at home to take with them to board at non-staffed stations?
I guess there would be or maybe they'd be doing it already.
The conductors would have to have a way to verify that the eticket was real which I imagine would take a complete overhaul of the systems. Well they need to be overhauled anyway.
And the gate agent or the "Security" checkpoint at the airport do? :huh: If you don't check bags, you don't go to the ticket counter, and most passengers do not even go to the counter at the gate.
Sure they do. When your boarding pass is scanned at the gate, it compares that pass to a real time database of all ticket holders for the flight. If you printed your boarding pass, called the airline and canceled and then showed up at the gate, you will not get on the plane! The system updates in real time and the validity of your ticket is instantly verified.
On a train, this isn't possible without full time wireless connectivity and overhauling the Amtrak system to support eticketing. The major challenge, as I see it, is provide eticketing service in areas with poor cellular coverage. I'd assume whatever device conductors were using would download a manifest each time it was in cell service, but what do you do with the passenger who books at the last minute from a station that has no cell service whatsoever?
It's just that much harder to eticket on a train. When Amtrak does it, I'll bet you'll see it in the Northeast Corridor California (edited in response to Alan's above post) first, and slowly expand to other corridors with decent cell service, while taking quite a while to be deployed on LD trains.
In the meantime, though, I don't see why Amtrak can't overhaul its system to fix some of the problems associated with handwritten tickets.