Why would they lock out tourists from public transport?
Comment on [deleted]
lime@feddit.nu 7 months ago
it’s not even about a smartphone, it’s about being allowed to access services with said smartphone.
when the ticket machine was removed from a train station in rural sweden and replaced with a note on how to buy tickets online, it instantly locked three types of people out: people who don’t have a smartphone, people who don’t have a payment card, and tourists. because it required online verification, you basically needed a swedish phone number and id to buy tickets.
this was about eight years ago, so smartphone penetration was lower, but i still think about the people i met at the train station while i desperately tried to order tickets over the phone and kept getting stuck in their automated phone tree. they were basically stuck there.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 7 months ago
lime@feddit.nu 7 months ago
it wasn’t intentional. they just didn’t think about how to implement it. took them four or five years to fix.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 7 months ago
I guess it depends on how you needed to sign up to buy tickets, but I bought tickets on my phone in Sweden with my smartphone in Sweden with only a valid email address. The app even had an English mode.
lime@feddit.nu 7 months ago
yeah it works nowadays. didn’t when they first introduced it.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 7 months ago
And did you have a payment card that worked in Sweden? Or was it not needed?
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 7 months ago
You needed a payment card of some sort.
Valmond@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Sweden is so backwater in it’s tries to be forward thinking.
You can’t even buy a bus ticket with a visa card (nor cash ofc ofc).
lime@feddit.nu 7 months ago
depends on the place. you can in stockholm, but not most places.
remon@ani.social 7 months ago
I bought a train ticket at a ticket machine with cash when I was in Sweden last year.
lime@feddit.nu 7 months ago
they reinstated the machines on large stations. this one was tiny.
Valmond@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Anecdotal evidence.