Tickets Please!

I had to go to West Kirby yesterday.  It was a Sunday, and who even knows what the timetables are these days with Covid, so I went to the journey planner on the Merseyrail app to find out when the trains were.  It came up with the times, and also the fares for the journey:

For some reason, it is 25p cheaper for me to get a Wirral-only Day Saver ticket - which allows me as many journeys over Merseyrail on the peninsula as I want - than to get a simple Birkenhead Park-West Kirby return.  This is obviously illogical and is probably down to some nefarious corporate shenanigans I am not privy to.  All I know is, as a customer, I could save myself an entire quarter of a pound by getting a Day Saver.  So I decided to do that.

I also remembered seeing Merseyrail's Twitter feed, and its website, and how it said you could buy the Day Saver online.  Handy!

You can't buy a Day Saver from within the app.  That would seem like the logical place to buy it - I was sat there with my phone in my hand, Apple Pay at the ready.  But no.  Instead I had to open the Merseyrail website on my phone and go to Buy Tickets Online there.

I went onto the page and there was another problem.  The only Day Saver on offer was one for the whole of the network - £5.50.  Which, if you've been paying attention, is more than the £4.35 return to West Kirby, and more than the £4.10 Day Saver I'd been promised by the app.

By this time I was getting a little disgruntled.  The logical thing to do would be to stop, go to the station and buy the cheap Day Saver in person.  I did not do this.  I'd put time into this purchase, dammit, and besides, I thought this might be some prime CONTENT for the blog.  Look, I'm not going out on the trains, I've got to put something up here to justify that Ko-Fi money (by the way, thank you to the anonymous person who is paying £3 a month, even when there's no posts at all; you're a treasure and a king/queen).  I therefore decided to use that Ko-Fi cash to buy the more expensive ticket, just because I'd not done it before, and I was curious.  I ticked the boxes to say I wanted an adult ticket for today.

This took me to another page where I had to fill in my e-mail address... and my name... and my phone number.  It seemed like a lot - isn't my e-mail address enough? - but I did it anyway.

Finally, proceed to payment.  Once again, I was going to have to type.  I had a device in my hand where a tap of my fingerprint (yes, I'm on an iPhone 8, I'm old-skool) could authorise a payment from my account.  This option was not available.  Instead I had to find my wallet and type in all my card details.

After a couple of redirects, and a wait that started to prickle at my anxieties, success!  I had purchased a Day Saver and now I could access the PDF with my ticket on it.  Yes, you read that right; I was e-mailed a PDF so I could print it out if I wanted.

This is, let's be honest, nonsense.  In 2022 there is no need for any of this.  I have various apps for various different train companies; I've been buying e-tickets for years.  Most of the time it goes something like this:

• Pick a journey
• Pick a ticket
• Press my finger to the Home button to pay
• Put it in my iPhone Wallet, or in the train company app, and activate it on the day

There's a QR code that I can use if I'm stopped by a ticket inspector, or on ticket gates.  It sits in my phone and is easily accessible and simple to use.  Why are Merseyrail persisting with this system?

As with everything else to do with ticketing on Merseyside, it's archaic and over-complicated.  The ability to pick up pre-booked tickets at stations was only added late last year, even though, as a network with 100% fully staffed ticket offices, this should have been a service for years.  The MetroCard continues to struggle to exist, much as its predecessor the Walrus did, with weird quirks for no reason (why can't I order a card online?  Why do I have to go to a PayPoint store?).  It's 2022; I have a device in my hand that has more processing power than every NASA computer that sent men to the moon.  I should be able to simply buy a ticket online.  Leaving everything else aside, the easier it is to buy a ticket, the more likely people are to do it.  

I'm sure there are plans to improve all this; I'm sure there is one very overworked young programmer sweating over his PC trying to wrangle the future.  As a customer, however, it all feels a bit last century.

(Obviously, after all this wrangling, my ticket wasn't checked once, so I could've quite easily not bothered and saved myself the money).

RIP Walrus: 2011-2019

Steve Rotherham, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, made an announcement today:

“Today I am announcing the start of a new era for smart travel for the Liverpool City Region. 

“Our city region already has more than 400,000 journeys per week on the Walrus card, the largest scheme outside London, but I’m not satisfied with being the best of the rest. 

“Right now, our ticket system overall is a confusing mix of prices and products, with the challenge put to the travelling public to find the cheapest price – if they can. We need to change this by making catching a bus or train as easy as possible and ensuring that passengers know they are not being ripped off. 

“The first step will be the phasing out of Walrus to be replaced with a new MetroCard, with the ability for tickets to be bought online, coming in the next few months."

Yep, the Walrus is dead.  And let's be honest, this was a mercy killing. 

Merseytravel's very own smart card, the Walrus, was announced to the public back in 2011.  This bit of plastic would take every form of ticket available - season, day, single journey.  It'd be smart and updateable.  It'd be valid on every form of transport across Merseyside.  By 2012 it'd be used by season ticket holders, and by 2013 it'd have pay as you go.  The future was coming.  I was so excited, I actually typed a blog post from an airport departure lounge on my phone; I really had to get down how keen I was for this to happen.

Time moved on, and the Walrus didn't appear.  And when I say time, I mean years.  It was late 2014 before they started creeping out, purely as a method for holding the Saveaway.  You couldn't load them online; you couldn't buy them in advance; there was no personal details held, so you couldn't check the usage.  It was a bit of plastic you handed over when you bought a Saveaway - and keep the receipt, because hardly anyone had a way of checking if it was valid.  And you had to go to a PayPoint shop to buy it, because the buses couldn't sell it, and Merseyrail were sticking with the paper form.

Slowly, over time, other products were added.  Some of the yearly travel passes, and then some of the monthly ones.  But it was still clunky and ineffective.  Meanwhile, other city regions introduced their own smart cards without hassle or problems.  On top of that, new technology swept in to overtake the idea of a plastic travel card.  My mum used her debit card on the tube when she was visiting my brother - no Oyster required.  I collected Manchester's tram stops almost entirely using my phone - an e-ticket on Northern from Liverpool, then a day ticket on the getmethere app.  The world was moving on and the Walrus looked dated. 

I'm not sure what the problem with Walrus was; I've heard rumours about in-house software, or the zones being difficult to programme.  All I know is that the decision to kill it should've happened about five years ago.  Scrap the work, go to London, and pay them for whatever they use for the Oyster.  Sorted.  The swiftness of the MetroCard's implementation - online testing before Christmas, with availability for the public in the New Year - makes me think this is exactly what's happened.  The MetroCard isn't as sexy a name as the Walrus, but if it works, who cares?  (It's better than getmethere, anyway).  With it comes a promise of online top ups, fare capping, and smooth movement between transport methods.  Admittedly, we had these promises back in 2011, but this time I actually believe it might happen.  And about time too.

Goodbye Walrus.  We hardly knew ye.