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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

Every transit system should have a “tourist day pass” that is moderately expensive but allows you to use anything for 24 hours or so.

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I think having tickets at all is antiquated. In the Netherlands, there are terminals at the stations you tap your bank card against to "check in". When you get off, you tap it again at that station and your card gets charged. Sometimes the conductor comes around with a device to make sure people have checked in.

If you don't want your travel to be associated with your bank account, you can get a chip card which can be topped up using cash.

I have about half a dozen different ways to get from one train station to another, some with first and second class options. Just tapping in and out would not be sufficient to find out how much I have to pay or in some cases which company to reimburse.

For that reason before tapping in, you can select the correct class and discount in the app.

So you don't just need a card. You also need an app. Which I seemed unable to setup when I was last in the Netherlands.

So after a quick google it seems that the only thing is does is "automatically" calculate the price based on start and end of your trip. I put automatically in quotes because you have to stamp in/out every time you switch trains and it pre fines you for not doing it correctly the moment you use it. I think I prefer just being able to select the correct ticket ahead of time.

Systems where you have to checkout are always problematic in my view. Huge queue because one terminal is broken etc. lead to maxed out fares and unhappy customers.

Germany had it for a while (TouchPoint) but they gave it up thankfully — although I don't know the exact reason it was given up.

Yes like in london.

I bought a 24h pass at 8pm, only to find out it's 24h only if you buy it at 00.00, because they all expire at midnight.

They are basically running a legalised tourist scam over there. I can imagine hundreds of thousands of people falling for this.

In London, aren't you pushed towards using a contactless credit or debit card?

(They expire at 4am, though the point remains.)

Oyster cards still seem to be pretty common though I think you can use contactless credit cards in a lot of situations these these days.

Commuters with monthly or longer tickets will need to use an Oyster card, but anyone with only weekly, daily or individual tickets is fine with a contactless credit card.

I think only foreign tourists who don't have a credit/debit card, or whose banks levy a high, fixed charge per card transaction, or who are eligible for some other discount (foreign children age 5-17) should buy an Oyster card.

I'm sure tourists are aware of all this tricks in the first 30 minutes that they are in london /s

> but anyone with only weekly […] tickets is fine with a contactless credit card

1. The weekly capping always runs Monday to Sunday, so if your stay doesn't align with that, you'll get to pay an additional capping period, in which case buying a weekly travelcard aligned with your stay will likely be cheaper (as long as you know which zones you'll mainly require).

2. Having a travelcard gives you the ability to buy slightly cheaper rail tickets for destinations outside of the TfL zones. Pay-as-you-go doesn't, unless you physically get off the train in order to touch in/out at the boundary.

3. Transit nerds only: Pay-as-you-go is subject to certain maximum journey times. If you'll exceed those by staying to long within the system, you'll be presumed to have forgotten to touch out and will be charged a maximum fare. A travelcard avoids that issue.

In Rome, you can now just tap contactless payment cards (/ smartphones, I assume) to readers in buses/ at underground stations. Huge step up from the previous system, which was based on buying paper tickets from newsagents.

But now Italian newsagents don’t get to laugh at us pronouncing the ‘g’ in biglietti. Makes me feel a bit nostalgic/sad for some reason.

The "g" is pronounced (in a sense). In Italian, the digraph "gl" represents a single sound /ʎ/, which is distinct from the sound represented by "l" alone (/l/)

City passes are mostly a lousy deal unless you're zipping here and there all day every day. Pay per use is almost always a better deal but you need to know the particulars and get the right card/amount.

True, but I often find them worth it to not have to worry about buying appropriate tickets for every journey when I'm a tourist in an unfamiliar city. And on many transit systems, the options seem to be, "Be a local and get an affordable pass or reloadable card, buy individual tickets for every journey, or be a visitor and buy a moderately more expensive tourist day pass."

This is extra true if you're traveling with a family including kids, as I often am.

That’s the whole point. Tourists won’t really care if they spend more than they have to, and they don’t have to worry about it at all. Regulars and the price conscious will go the cheaper route.

Tourists will often just take taxis. Why fool around with figuring out the particulars of the local mass transit for a few trips over a short time.

Last time I was in Copenhagen I asked at the hotel desk how to get to the airport on public transit and the guy said just take a taxi it will be faster and much easier for you.

It depends on the city and where you're staying. Heathrow to much of central London can literally be about $100 cheaper on the tube and just as fast if you just have carryon luggage during normal times of the day. (Don't remember the situation last time I was in Copenhagen.)

I agree that tourists in an unfamiliar city will often just take a taxi by default though.

Integrate it into my visa (stamp).

I’m also surprised airports don’t integrate it into their passenger fees and boarding passes. But maybe that’s getting a little too multi-modal to handle.

Depending on what I'm doing I often don't want to pay a lot for public transit because I won't use it much. And often don't even get a stamp, e.g. going to the UK from the US.

Very impractical on some routes, no one is even going to look at your passport in Schengen area flights.

Most visitors don't need visa stamps in their passport.

Depends where you go and where you're coming from. Just a matter of time before it's all RFID'd into the passport or access is granted to to the central db to random transit cops.

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