Print-at-home tickets

[jis]

If I had my druthers, I'd rather not print anything ever. I'd rather download the appropriate document into my iPhone or other Smartphone and just have that scanned wherever it is needed, just like I do with Continental Airlines. This of course means that the document must have enough crypto stuff in it to authenticate the document, something I suspect any self-respecting print at home ticket system also has.

 

[Auntie Gravity]

Given the current political climate in this country turning most definitely anti-rail, Amtrak will have far more pressing issues than e-ticketing in the next budget year...such as sheer survival of the national rail system. Discussing the virtues of e-ticketing seem rather pointless? hboy:

 

[TransitGeek]

Given the current political climate in this country turning most definitely anti-rail, Amtrak will have far more pressing issues than e-ticketing in the next budget year...such as sheer survival of the national rail system. Discussing the virtues of e-ticketing seem rather pointless? hboy:

I highly doubt anything will happen to Amtrak in the next two years. Yes, we'll probably stop gaining funding. However, there are a lot of pro-rail Republicans (or at least pro-rail-in-their-district Republicans), and even if the Republican-controlled House were to manage to pass a bill cutting Amtrak funding, the Senate will surely not (considering the system runs in 46 states- that's 92 Senators with an incentive to keep the trains running).

Many will say that the House can simply choose not to allocate the funds, and then the funds won't be there- and, strictly speaking, this is true. However, this sort of thing rarely happens, because disagreements on the budget rarely produce government shutdowns (though we did see one in 1995). Both parties recognize that keeping the federal government running is a better than letting it grind to a halt, and so what usually happens is a "continuing resolution" will be passed, continuing the funding for any given program (or the government as a whole) at the previous year's funding levels until a budget agreement can be reached. Any budget that the Senate and President Obama can agree to will not defund the national rail system, and so we'll see one of two outcomes- a budget with very modest, mostly symbolic cuts that actually passes, or no budget at all for quite some time, and the government running on continuing resolutions until the next election.

I'm much more concerned about state-supported corridors and the California High-Speed Rail project- those come out of state budgets, which are tanking right now.