In the past, I used to buy my tickets for public transport at the ticket machine. I take the train to work sporadically (too cold, snow, too lazy …) and I'm trying to force myself to rather use my bike – so a monthly ticket wouldn't really be worth it and most importantly, it would undermine my attempt to discipline myself.
And then I discovered there's an iPhone app offering ticket purchase. You just install a service called Handy Ticket (link to a German website), register yourself including your bank account for monthly withdrawal and there you go. I'm using it since quite a while now and didn't run into any trouble yet (apart from general connectivity problems, so it's actually better to buy a ticket before entering the train or bus). Some bus drivers are still quite irritated and funny enough, I ran into a ticket inspector the time I used the mobile ticket for the very first time. All in all, the service is very convenient.
Probably too convenient – or not convenient enough?
What I figured is that after getting used to it, I tend to forget to buy a ticket quite often. That's what monthly tickets are good for, you might think – but as mentioned, it would still be more expensive after all and also, I didn't forget to buy tickets when I was still using the ticket machine. This might be due to the fact that I'm at least unconsciously still conditioned to the need of having an interruptive interaction, a minor time lag before starting transportation. My mental model of taking a bus or a train probably hasn't yet adapted to this new form of fee-based locomotion.
But shouldn't a modern service, offering a more convenient way to pay for transportation also be able to help me adapt to such new behaviour without running into complications (no ticket + ticket inspector is particularly nasty if you're for a moment not fully aware of your punishable act – and there's just no valid excuse; of course, even no connectivity or empty batteries are your own fault).
I have no elaborate solution in mind. But my first thought meandered towards the whole discussion about "auto checkins" for services such as Foursquare. Foursquare allows you to "check into" places so your friends know where you are (and also to enable local marketing activities such as special deals and coupons for eg. store owners), but you have to take your device out of your pocket, launch an application and actively choose the appropriate location from a list. Since these check-ins are of course optional and you might not want to check into certain places sometimes, there's good reasoning against enabling auto check-in just for the sake of more convenience.
But what if "check-in" is not optional – or in other words: what if "check-in" does not mean "I'm here" but "I'm here and I paid"? I'm not at all talking about the social level – nobody needs to know about it except the system. But wouldn't this added convenience of some kind of sensors doing the interaction instead of your finger, avoid the inconvenience of forgetting to buy a ticket?
Isn't that exactly what monthly tickets are here for?
Even if they're a bit more expensive sometimes, one could consider these extra bucks for added convenience. And meeting the ticket inspector without a ticket in your pocket or on your device is also quite expensive. That's partly true I'd say, but it doesn't draw the full picture nor does it utilize the full potential.
On one hand, you still have to manually buy a ticket, even if it's just once a month. But also, there's a two way connection between service and customer, allowing for real-time interaction beyond traditional one-way ticket transactions: the system could know where you are, how often you use the transportation, how long and for how many stops you're using it etc.
Couldn't this also lead to new and more precise – "performance based" – pricing models? If technology is mature and accurate enough – and usage data are available in real-time, why should 2 stops cost the same as 8 stops? And if I use the train every day, always on the same trip with 14 stops but not during "rush hour" – why shouldn't I be automatically granted a discount? Although to me the badges earned for certain check-in patterns on Foursquare are not really meaningful or don't have any actual benefit, I see quite some potential here if they could have more drastic implications on one's overall expenses. Being close to that next badge, announcing a 10% discount for the next month could seriously make me consider use the public transportation system more regularly.
And then, what about taking my bike more often?
