I’m a Gen z baby, but as I was showing the ticket inspector my tickets, I observed a multitude of older people (70-80 y/o) use Digital tickets on their IPhones.
I love technology, but the one time I used a digital tickets, I had issues scanning through the barriers. From then I always preferred physical tickets.
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Train tickets?
confused in Midwest
I’d do on the rare occasions I use the train, mainly cos I’ve seen people struggle to get the digital ones working.
Digital tickets should work however I see so many young people with cracks on their phone screens that it doesn’t scan properly
I do not have and will not have a smartphone. So tickets I can print at home (or tickets printed for me by the place I bought them) are the only thing I’d use for travel.
my parents. they can use their default apps on a good day without issue. but they barely ride a train so i won’t overcomplicate it by forcing them to use an app.
I’m from a very rural area but due to tourism we have a very good airport nearby, so trains aren’t much used.
semi-related, I take the commuter bus to work every day. I use a physical card because it’s faster since my busses don’t have a screen scanner for the digital tickets. Also, a physical card/ticket doesn’t rely on my phone battery.
Physical train tickets cost an extra €0.50 or so, so no, I haven’t used a physical train ticket in 15 years. Unless you call tap in/tap out with a bank / transport card a physical ticket. Every ticket I’ve bought since in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, England, France, Spain and Italy has been electronic, except metro tickets in the Paris metro some years ago because my phone didn’t support their mobile ticket app back then.
It’s difficult to by a ticket abroad in advance. I can’t exactly go to a train station weeks before my trip to reserve a ticket, so I book online. Also saves dealing with language barriers.
I don’t, but because in Germany with the Deutschlandticket it’s more convenient to have it digital. I think you can’t even get a physical ticket anymore. The problem with a physical ticket is that it’s a monthly subscription, and you’d somehow have to either find a way to renew a physical card every month that’s practical, print and mail a new ticket every month or just make it digital with a QR code in an app that can be changed easily every month. I don’t know what went wrong with whatever tickets you have, but I never had an issue with the app and the scanning here. Just keep a powerbank in your bag and you’re safe most of the time. If it was just a simple one-way ticket I would buy a physical version as well, but no way I’m gonna bother with that with a subscription.
It’s quite difficult to buy actual tickets here, other than for long journeys, inter-city. They offer PDFs, which they expect you to have on your phone. My wife tends to have them on her phone, but also has ‘what if my phone dies’ paranoia so prints them too.
Public transport around here only has paper tickets for tourists who can’t figure out all you need to do is wave your phone at the barrier, NFC does the rest. You can’t get on a bus with anything other than NFC.
The trick, btw, if it’s not scanning properly, is to turn your phone’s brightness up.
Neh, just usy my card, haven’t used tickets in ages here.
When in a country where you need a ticket instead of a card the ticket will be digital.
We don’t have many trains where I live, but I fly several times a year. While I can use digital boarding pass, I’ve had enough problems with airline apps not working well and having issues loading the boarding pass at the gate. As such, I tend to use the physical boarding pass given to me at check in since it always works. The exception is for public transit, but generally I am using tap-to-pay with my credit card rather than a paper ticket or a digital wallet.
Yeah I’ve used a train ticket (gen Z) on the MARC train
I went to Belgium so I could buy one
Yeah go to like Austria or Italy.
Actually Venice is cool, they have RFID paper tickets for their ferries.
I use as much physical stuff as possible. One of my fears is being stranded somewhere because my phone ran out of battery or something, making everything on it inaccessible (money, bus / train tickets, etc)
I don’t take the train but I always print off my boarding pass for planes from the kiosk.
I have all the apps. I digital check in. However, I can count on 1 hand the number of times I’ve used my digital boarding pass on my last 100 flights over 3 years.
I don’t like to carry my phone in my hand while dealing with luggage/bags. It’s so much easier to whip out the paper ticket and then shove it in a pocket while my phone is either in my bag or pocket.
No choice, only way to get tickets for my local station is printed ones.
I’m in Sweden. You can use a physical access card on public transport in Stockholm, it is a plastic card with a microchip. For long distance train you can buy paper tickets from a machine next to the train station, it is not old fashioned more like a receipt.
I do use only physical tickets. I dont need to take out any ID to use them, phone can die, impossible to buy it last minute, websites often don’t work. Its less struggle for me to buy paper one
Brit here, yes. I usually have to travel for work purposes and our booking agency gives us the option of an e-ticket or a paper ticket most of the time. Whenever available I choose the paper ticket, just as a keepsake
Had a mate from the US come over to visit last year and I asked the barrierman if they could let her keep it also, they did. It’s nothing hugely significant but I like having them around and will look at them occasionally to be reminded of that particular journey. Got tickets going all the way back to 2005 in a big box
A few days ago in Japan we had physical tickets for the bullet train to/from Kyoto. They were never checked outside of having to go thru the machine