Sunday, April 11, 2010

How Things Should Work

Unfortunately it was raining pretty hard today, which means I can't get NBC and apparently AT&T service is somewhat haywire. But the Master's was on TV and there was a commercial that showed how AT&T wishes people could buy train tickets. While its nice to think that it would or could even work in this way, it will take upgrades to wireless in the subways and faster connections speeds. I wonder if they could have done this on a freeway.

3 comments:

rj said...

Someone's already doing it. German Railways offers its ordinary cell phone tickets on m.bahn.de which you can book up to ten minutes ahead departure.

Then there is the ongoing pilot program Touch&Travel which allows passengers to 'swipe' their cell phone like a smart card at departure and arrival.

Brian Bundridge said...

Actually this commercial comes on the heels of Amtrak announcing that you can now change your tickets for the train online.

http://bit.ly/90dEE6 (pdf)

Helen Bushnell said...

Yeah, I always buy tickets for Amtrak online, and so far I have been able to change my tickets right up to the time of departure with no cancellation penalties.

I actually thought that the ad underestimated how long it takes to get from one track to another.