e-ticketing question

[amamba]

So I was at the station this weekend picking up a monthly pass for August for my H. They had a great little brochure on e-ticketing, and I had a nice chat with the ticket agent. According to the brochure, e-tickets will NOT be available for 10 ride passes or monthly passes. Anyone know why not?

 

[AlanB]

Because there is no easy way to verify that you are the one who actually purchased that monthly pass with an eTicket. You could share your barcode with twenty friends and Amtrak wouldn't know.

 

[amamba]

Oh, that does make sense. Thanks Alan. Sometimes the answer is so simple....

 

[Afsheen]

Because there is no easy way to verify that you are the one who actually purchased that monthly pass with an eTicket. You could share your barcode with twenty friends and Amtrak wouldn't know.

I understand what you're saying, but to a lesser extent, that's also true with paper passes - if I didn't use it every weekday, I could easily share my monthly pass with other people, because nobody has ever asked me for an ID. In fact, I think asking for ID would actually be a very easy solution to this problem: just scan my barcode and look at my driver's license. Isn't that less fallible than the old "glance at your paper ticket" system, anyway?

As someone who uses an NYP-PHL monthly pass, I'm really disappointed to hear that eticketing won't be an option, because I love the idea of not constantly having to keep track of a $1000+ piece of paper, and I think the ease of sharing barcodes can be really easily overcome by asking for ID, so I'm frustrated that they haven't (yet?) implemented yet.

 

[Trogdor]

Part of it is the time-consuming nature of asking everyone for their ID.

Another issue is that, with a paper ticket, even if you shared it, only one person could use it at a time nonetheless. With etickets, you could make multiple copies, hand them to several people, and as long as two people weren't on the same train at the same time, the system wouldn't be able to recognize the abuse.

I know Amtrak is nowhere near ready for this technology (and it probably wouldn't be worth the investment), but it would be nice if there could be some kind of card similar to a transit smart card, where the pass is stored on your card. If you lose it, you pay a small fee ($5-$10) and get it replaced, and the old one is cancelled and the pas automatically transfers to the new one.

Again, though, the market for such would be very small on Amtrak. I don't think the conductor devices are equipped to read smart cards, but if they were, it might even be doable through an agreement with a credit card company to use a smart chip enabled credit card.

 

[jis]

I know Amtrak is nowhere near ready for this technology (and it probably wouldn't be worth the investment), but it would be nice if there could be some kind of card similar to a transit smart card, where the pass is stored on your card. If you lose it, you pay a small fee ($5-$10) and get it replaced, and the old one is cancelled and the pas automatically transfers to the new one.

That is how it is done around London using the Oyster Card, or around Tokyo using the SUICA Card.

 

[amamba]

yeah...what Afsheen said. As always, Afsheen is a much better write than me. :wub:

Although Afsheen, I don't know if you always take the same train, but have you found that many of the conductors recognize you now? The two on the 66 definitely recognize my H.

 

[Nathanael]

Amtrak has been doing e-ticketing where it's "easy" first and worrying about the corner cases later. (There seem to be quite a lot of corner cases.)

This seems sensible to me. The main goals of e-ticketing from Amtrak's point of view are:

(1) Reduce confusion among passengers used to airline e-tickets;

(2) Reduce time-consuming paper-counting by conductors;

(3) Reduce/eliminate backoffice staffing (I think it was in El Paso or something?) reconciling used tickets;

(4) Reduce mailing-the-tickets issues for people using unstaffed stations;

...and for these purposes Amtrak achieves most of their goals even if only 90% of tickets are "e-tickets".

 

[me_little_me]

There's been a lot of speculation in this thread as well as different interpretations of past policy, Amtrak's seeming practice in the past vs written policy and answers from agents whose history has been that if you don't like an answer, you call back later.

May I suggest that when one has some actual experience with exchanging etickets that involve fare reductions or cancellations of reservations that result in wanting a cash refund or CC credit post their actual experience in a new thread at least until Amtrak's real policy becomes clearer.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

A new wrinkle in E-Tickets. If you plan on using your I-phone as your ticket (per my conductor) if you have a protective screen (anti-scratch) the E-Ticket can not be read. Oh and the conductors think the system too slow.

 

[jis]

A new wrinkle in E-Tickets. If you plan on using your I-phone as your ticket (per my conductor) if you have a protective screen (anti-scratch) the E-Ticket can not be read. Oh and the conductors think the system too slow.

So Amtrak managed to do something to cause that problem that airlines don't have? Oh well....

As for slow, well coffee time in Cafe can be shortened by a bit to account for that :lol:

 

[SubwayNut]

That hasn't been a problem for me.I have been on Amtrak a couple times this week and have has my eTicket read through my protective otter box no problems. It was faster than the scanning of the electronic boarding document of the guy sitting next to me.

 

[jis]

That hasn't been a problem for me.I have been on Amtrak a couple times this week and have has my eTicket read through my protective otter box no problems. It was faster than the scanning of the electronic boarding document of the guy sitting next to me.

So I guess it was just the conductor moaning due to difficulty adapting to change. Happens. That is why it is so hard to figure out which of these are real issues and which ones just people moaning about something or the other.

 

[PRR 60]

A new wrinkle in E-Tickets. If you plan on using your I-phone as your ticket (per my conductor) if you have a protective screen (anti-scratch) the E-Ticket can not be read. Oh and the conductors think the system too slow.

As long as the QR Code is visible it should scan. The reader processes a video image of the code. The presence or absence of an anti-scratch screen should not matter.

I get the sense that some conductors simply don't like the e-tickets and scanning and they are searching for reasons to complain.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

As long as the QR Code is visible it should scan. The reader processes a video image of the code. The presence or absence of an anti-scratch screen should not matter.

I get the sense that some conductors simply don't like the e-tickets and scanning and they are searching for reasons to complain.

I agree.

However the lack of knowledge is the overall issue. Ticket agent this am did not know if you can scan from a phone. This morning conductor was over joy that he did scan 5 phones today, as he was manual enter my data, due the ticket that was printed by the station agent would not scan.

The gate check / TSA people in NYP had to be able to read the ticket to see where I was going, before allow me to board.

It's a learn experience type of day.