mTickets

[whole diary]

[IanL]

And keeping your phone charged throughout!

When the power sockets in the trains don't work 80% of the time!

[Surrey 455]

I do think it odd that national Express charge an extra 50p for an m ticket when the likes of Ryanair and easyjet, wilts and Dorset bus company do not. You get the impression that they are afraid of the  digital age.

[LiskeardRich]

I do think it odd that national Express charge an extra 50p for an m ticket when the likes of Ryanair and easyjet, wilts and Dorset bus company do not. You get the impression that they are afraid of the  digital age.

Megabus have it even better, you just have to show the driver your reference, no tickets. Record your reference in anyway you feel like and driver verifies your reference.

[Henry]

 With all this advancement in technology, my greatest fear is that the pleasant
 gentleman at Totnes booking office may well become extinct.

[Bmblbzzz]

I think the main reason the various TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) only offer m-tickets, e-tickets or various printouts for Advance fares is that they can send info to the specific booked train's guard that allows him to know how many to expect to check.  Same as SWT^▸ (South West Trains) do with their 'megatrain' booking reference numbers.

If you allowed an m-ticket for any walk up fare, every guard on a number of possible trains would all need the same information, and there'd also need to be a watertight system to avoid duplication...

Yes, you'd need some system to avoid people using the same ticket on multiple journeys. Presumably Swedish railways have some way of doing this. If not, then as paper tickets are supposedly to be phased out within the next ten years (thread passim), that implies that fares not linked to specific trains are also to be phased out, which would make rather a mess on certain lines where there's nothing else.