The railway company justifies this decision by the fact that “the vast majority of (its) customers no longer have to stamp their tickets”.
A page in railway history is about to turn. Machines for stamping train tickets in stations will gradually disappear. The SNCF highlights the observation that, “depending on the lines, 96 to 99% of tickets are now digital“. “We have therefore decided to remove the composters from our stations because the vast majority of our customers no longer have to compost their tickets.“, indicates the company.
These yellow terminals, which replaced the orange mechanical composters in the 2000s, “will be phased out gradually“, specifies the SNCF. Today, the park of composters is made up of more than 700 TGV and Intercités composters and nearly 2,500 TER composters. On the other hand, the removal of composters does not concern Transilien, TER Sud PACA and TER Nouvelle-Aquitaine trips, specifies the public railway company.
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For the SNCF, the disappearance of this part of the railway heritage goes hand in hand with the end of the compulsory composting of paper tickets on January 1, 2023. This type of cardboard ticket “is almost no longer used“, underlines the SNCF. Instead of stamping, holders of these paper tickets are now invited to report to the skipper, who will validate the ticket when accessing the train, specifies the company.
The passage to the TGV boarding gates does not change, recalls the SNCF. For customers with an e-ticket, there are no changes to note either. For the railway company, the goal of ending composting is to have “a simpler and more fluid journey», and to avoid composting errors.
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