> Actually, it might. If half the users can't use your highly-efficient system and then have to go bother your workers to figure out how to buy a ticket,
That's the kind of user-hostile decision-making that annoys and infuriates people. It's basically saying it's better to bother a hundred other people than have one person bother you.
In my comment I said that you need to support both sets of public transit users well, and that it's not either/or. In many cases it's a mistake to make the dumbed-down newbie interface the only interface, because that could make your system noticeably worse for most users.
Personally, in cases like this, I think some kind of touch-screen guide to the efficient expert interface is probably the right balance. Make it easier for newbies to scrape by (because that's the best they'll ever be able to do), but give frequent users a path a better experience rather than holding them back.
> that's probably worse than making things slightly easier for your regular visitors.
I think we're talking about residents, not visitors, in this case.