After the ticket counters, the public transport industry also wants to cut back on the ticket machines. It will be using digital tickets from 2035.
The ticket machines should disappear from the station halls and the bus stop houses.
lia. There are thousands of blue ticket machines at Swiss train stations. Sometimes in a group to meet the high demand for tickets in the halls in Zurich or Bern, sometimes alone on a lonely platform far away from the hustle and bustle of the city.
A train station without a ticket machine? For many unthinkable. And yet the era of the blue machines is foreseeable – as well as that of all other machines that spit out tickets for buses, trains or trams every day.
By 2035, ticket sales via digital channels should become “normal”, said René Schmied in an interview with the newspapers CH Media last week. Schmied is President of the Strategy Council of Alliance Swisspass, the public transport tariff industry association. The analog purchase of tickets should still be possible in the future – but only selectively. “It is conceivable that there are still machines at major hubs or in external shops,” says Schmied.
The public transport industry also wants to save on cash
The ticket machines fare the same as the personally manned counters before: They are too expensive and too complex to operate. The sale of tickets has long since shifted to digital channels via mobile phones, tablets and computers – this also influences the method of payment.
With the end of ticket machines, the public transport industry is also gradually saying goodbye to cash. “The industry is no longer obliged to accept cash,” says Schmied. “We no longer have to set up a safe at every stop – and these are de facto machines with cash payment options.”
But what do the changes mean for users who are less digitally savvy? While Pro Senectute on Request from SRF Given the longer time horizon, has few concerns about older customers, Pro Juventute spokesman Jan Schlink warns against forgetting the youngest commuters in the planned changes. “At the moment I can’t quite imagine an eight-year-old who can only buy a ticket online,” says Schlink.
It is still too early for Alliance Swisspass to talk about specific models for the year 2035. There are still several thousand ticket machines across Switzerland – and this fact will not change “in the short to medium term,” writes media spokesman Thomas Ammann on request.
Ammann emphasizes that access to trains and buses should also remain open to people without a cell phone or credit card – only time will tell how wide open and how difficult the way over the threshold will be.