<story><title>Reversing UK mobile rail tickets</title><url>https://eta.st/2023/01/31/rail-tickets.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fuzzfactor</author><text>On the Florida Turnpike it was always too expensive for many students when they traveled up and down the state.&lt;p&gt;It was bad enough having captive service stations and restaurants for overpriced products, but the toll was and still is ridiculous too, considering it was agreed there would be no toll after the construction was paid for,  And it was well paid for decades ago.&lt;p&gt;Anyway there were only very few exits and they were mostly rural until you got to South Florida where you could get off and on every few miles.  The captive service stations needeed to be built at the same time as the Turnpike or everybody would run out of gas back then.&lt;p&gt;Except Orlando which was a very small city before Disney came in, but their gas stations were still closed late at night and on Sunday.&lt;p&gt;Tickets were reverse engineered in a completely analog way.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;main entrance&amp;quot; to the Turnpike coming south was out in the middle of nowhere where the I-75 freeway keeps going to Tampa but you smoothly get over to the main gates of the Turnpike if you want to head down to Miami instead.  You would just breeze on through and pick up a ticket at the northernmost gate, and the further you traveled south, the more toll you would have to pay when you got off.&lt;p&gt;Students would get off of I-75 avoiding the Turnpike and drive on the rural roads about a half-hour until you get to the next Turnpike entrance and pick up a (very valuable) ticket there instead of at the main entrance to the north.&lt;p&gt;As you got down toward the Palm Beach area, where the northbounders and southbounders still shared the gas stations and restaurants in the central plazas, many northbound travelers would willingly trade tickets from wherever they got on in South Florida for one which will only cost them as much as if they got on at the very last chance before hitting the northernmost exit.&lt;p&gt;Northbounders would then get off right where they were going to anyway, one exit away from where we got on, and we would get off one exit away from where they got on, and everybody came out ahead, paying the minimum tolls possible.&lt;p&gt;It took a long time before any toll-takers started looking at the tickets and asking &amp;quot;why did it take 6 hours to only go one exit?&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Reversing UK mobile rail tickets</title><url>https://eta.st/2023/01/31/rail-tickets.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>switch007</author><text>&amp;gt; Nowadays, the industry would very much like you to ditch your paper ticket in favour of a fancy mobile barcode one (or an ITSO smartcard2); not only do they not have to spend money on printing tickets but they also gain the ability to more precisely track the ticket’s usage across the network and minimise fraud.&lt;p&gt;And unsurprisingly only a subset of tickets are available on the apps. Therefore the government gets its “fare simplification” it’s so badly wanted, through the back door, in a sense, the harder it pushes mobile tickets&lt;p&gt;Eg rover tickets are not on the ticketing apps. These can be excellent value.&lt;p&gt;Edit: also the government very recently announced [0] they are to scrap return fares. This will without a shadow of doubt increase prices for a great many journeys.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.railforums.co.uk&amp;#x2F;threads&amp;#x2F;end-of-the-line-for-return-rail-tickets.242970&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.railforums.co.uk&amp;#x2F;threads&amp;#x2F;end-of-the-line-for-ret...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>