On Dec 14, 5:39*pm, Theo Markettos
wrote:
In uk.railway Andy wrote:

I seem to recall seeing somewhere that one of the ideas is the virtual
carnet. Buy 10 tickets for a journey, taken at irregular intevals, but
only pay for 8. This is something that should be relatively simple to
setup with smartcard ticketing.

It would make sense to provide metro-area ticket across modes. *So you'd buy
a DayRider which would be valid on local buses, and on trains (journeys like
Southampton Central to Redbridge). *If you ended up at Poole on a train or
Andover on a bus you've gone too far and aren't travelling with a valid
ticket. *Just like you can travelcard to Watford Junction but not Milton
Keynes.

Though presumably to avoid massive abuse this would have to be
accompanied with a 'touch in and touch out' policy on buses and other
modes, which could be tricky with the one-door, tickets from the
driver approach adopted to bus operation in most areas other than
London.

Surely it's a tentative (and arguably over-optimistic) step towards
what the Netherlands has - a national smart card which is valid for
local transport anywhere in the country, or (at least) in the South
East, but which won't make any real sense until lots of operators and
areas are supporting it. Even without 'PAYG' train ticketing, you
could still have some form of capping, whereby the (electronically
deducted) bus journeys at either end of a Cambridge city centre -
Southampton town centre journey were effectively 'refunded' when the
train ticket was added to the smartcard.