Why, oh why, is it so hard to buy a digital bus ticket in 2026?

30 pointsposted 2 days ago
by jotaen
(jotaen.net)

25 Comments

adrian_b

a day ago

Where I live in Europe, a much simpler and better system is used.

No app, no account. I just send an SMS to a certain number, with a code for the kind of ticket that I want to buy, i.e. for a certain bus line or for all lines and the duration of validity.

The money is taken from the credit that I have at my phone company.

None of the problems described in the parent article can happen.

TFNA

a day ago

That is old, old tech, present in Finland already 20 years ago. And it sucked: if you had a prepaid card or a foreign SIM, you couldn't use the system.

Far better are the systems popping up in Europe where every bus has a terminal that accepts any Visa or Mastercard. You can just tap and ride, no more tickets unless you need a monthly ticket. Generally such terminals even remember your payment, so you can transfer lines by tapping again but won't be charged again.

account42

a day ago

If implemented in a customer friendly way with fare capping you don't even need to worry about monthly tickets either.

adrian_b

21 hours ago

Nope.

I have a prepaid card and I never had a subscription to a mobile phone company.

The only thing that matters for buying the ticket is to have a non-null credit at the phone company.

Though I agree that probably it does not work for foreign SIMs. Foreigners have alternative means, e.g. buying all-line passes for a certain duration, with a credit card, from automatic dispensers. Also the use of a credit card with the terminal existing in any bus, works.

Of course the SMS-based method is very old tech, but it is far more convenient than the procedure described by the OP for Munich. It is also more convenient than having to use the credit card every time you take a bus.

I cannot imagine any newer tech that would be an improvement over this.

TFNA

20 hours ago

> It is also more convenient than having to use the credit card every time you take a bus.

That probably differs from person to person. Once I hit 40 and my eyesight declined, getting out my phone and sending an SMS is noticeably more effort than taking out my card and tapping (which I could do blindly).

user

2 days ago

[deleted]

greatgib

2 days ago

That is the curse of the current century. To me the same problem is affecting politics.

We use to have the world running on common sense, everyone would have worked on the goal of efficiency and progress. But now since a few decades, society is going downward. We are encountering thousand frustrations like that, everyday, it doesn't make any sense, but no one will fix anything, because no one is responsible, it is the process, it is "how things are supposed to be". There are very few corporate or political leaders that will be like a normal person and say: "fuck it, that is not possible, come here engineers, you have 5 hours to fix that so I can have my app work in a single click."

jotaen

2 days ago

For me personally, the frustration is still bearable. What I find concerning is how less tech-savvy people are supposed to deal with all this. Like, how do you explain the quirks and workarounds of such half-broken digital processes to an 80-year-old who already feels uncomfortable with smartphones and computers? I think this is also about social inclusion and who gets left behind.

holgerschurig

a day ago

Oh, why is it so easy to buy a digital bus ticket in 2023-today?

Because I used to live in the are of Frankfurt/Main, Germany. In Germany, we have lots of "Verkehrsverbünde". That are groups of traffic companies that work together. Often very mixed ones. In the case of Frankfurt, I think at least 3 companies having trains are involved. Then one with Trams. One with subways. And many with busses. And their routes have a diameter of goes from Hirschhorn in the South to Korbach in the North, about 250 km. It's named RMV, or Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund.

No why does this matter? Because you buy a ticket at this RMV and you can even swap the means of transportation. Drive with a bus to the metro, 3 stations with the metro, use the subway to your destination. All perfectly fine.

And they have of course a smartphone apps where you can register yourself. And then you can search for a route. And buy directly a ticket.

For me this is "buy a digital bus ticket". And since I can also benefit from the various special tarrifs (e.g. 24 card, week card, month card, german wide card) it is IMHO a tiny bit superior to contactless NFC payment. For both methods you need a smartphone, but the NFC payment methods is awkward to use for anything that needs you to switch from bus to metro, or when you want to benefit from some special tariff.

jotaen

a day ago

Where I grew up (Germany as well), these “Verkehrsverbünde” existed well before digital tickets. I agree it’s cool to have unified online route planners etc., but I think the fare structure and the vending platform are slightly separate things.

pseudohadamard

a day ago

It really depends on the city, and the solution is entirely non-technical. For example in Vienna you buy a daily/weekly/monthly ticket and it's enforced via spot checks. No queues, no waiting, no delays at gates. If your phone logs you out and you run into a spot check you get to stand aside and take as much time as you need to sign back in again. This is the best way to do it, in 99.9% of cases you can travel all day on public transport and never get bothered with payment issues.

Having said that, buying a single fare from VIE into the city with the WienMobil app is exactly the horror experience TFA describes, username, password, PIN, 3DSecure verification, MFA auth, fingerprint, urine sample, grandparents birth certificate and proof of citizenship going back five generations, dog's maiden name, all for something like a EUR 1.70 fare. The friend traveling with me had bought a paper ticket from a machine in a fraction of the time it took me with the app from an established, registered account.

Lots of other places have NFC payments so you just wave your phone or card at the reader and then, if it's done properly, get x amount of time to travel. For example for Brno from memory it's a fixed fare for up to 30 minutes and a slightly higher fare for more than that, calculated to when you tag off, and if you forget to tag off you pay the slightly higher fare by default. No apps, no logging on, it just works.

The worst way to do it is what we've got here, because of course it is: They're so traumatized about the prospect of losing even a single cent in potential unpaid fares (on a system that's mostly runs off taxpayer subsidies anyway) that you need to religiously tag on and off everywhere, all the time. It could quite possibly cost less to make it free and recover the difference by eliminating the overhead of collecting fares, as well as vastly speeding up loading/unloading passengers.

satiric

2 days ago

Where I am (Seattle) they've implemented regular tap to pay and Google Wallet integration (no Apple Wallet integration, because Apple says screw you). Whether you're a tourist using your credit card, or a local commuting on a monthly pass, it's very easy. I don't know why but I don't often see others use it.

rcxdude

a day ago

This is the best solution. London has had it for a while, for example. I also am not sure why this seems to be uncommon.

brokenmachine

a day ago

Ordering food is the same.

In the dark ages you just called a number, said what you want, and if you were a regular and they knew you, then you were done in less than 20 seconds.

Now it's a nightmare of two-factor garbage on top of vibe-coded garbage on top of middlemen selling your data. Everything sucks now.

TFNA

a day ago

Busy restaurants are more efficient if they don't have to answer the phone and can treat delivery orders the same as regular orders: just hand the order number over to the courier instead of the actual customer. Plus, in some places young people heavily order delivery now instead of going out to eat, and the restaurant could never cope with just their staff.

brokenmachine

15 hours ago

Then they could add staff.

If there's so many deliveries, they could do deliveries themselves.

Of course they probably can't compete with underpaid and exploited gig worker "contractors".

Like I said, everything sucks now.

TFNA

15 hours ago

Back in the old days, a locally owned restaurant might have had 1-2 delivery persons, and chain fast food (other than pizza) had none. It was easy for restaurants themselves to have their own delivery staff, because demand was low and predictable enough. Today, demand has exploded -- in my European city there is a whole crowd of South Asians with square backpacks going in and out of fast-food places -- but is unpredictable at any given place at any given time.

The gig workers might be exploited and ordering may involve some hassles and middleman-skimming within the phone app, but this is the system that satisfies a lot of younger people today who do not want to go out themselves for food. I think many would disagree this "sucks", and regard the system you are nostalgic for as very limited in terms of their choices.

brokenmachine

10 hours ago

The people most satisfied with that system are the gig economy companies who seem to have successfully shirked all responsibility and accountability.

There is a world that exists in my imagination where we don't need to exploit people, and pay them their fair share and provide a proper working environment - and also get our food delivered.

Personally I would rather live in that world, and I don't care if that adds to the cost of my delivered food.

VohuMana

2 days ago

The parking app for my city is similar to this experience. I feel so old when I’m like I remember when this used to be an easy thing not even 10 years ago, get out of my car, go to the meter or kiosk, pay with cash or card, and get a little slip of paper to put on my dash. Now it’s a mess of reauth prompts, offers from select “partners”, and other additional hoops. Even more fun sometimes the backend is slow or broken a cop tries to give you a ticket even though you can show him you paid but “that’s not what his device says”

account42

a day ago

What regular public transport rider in Germany doesn't have a Deutschland Ticket?

jotaen

21 hours ago

Not sure if that's a sincere question, but Deutschland Ticket is €63 a month, a single trip in Munich is €4,20. That's break even from 15/month rides onwards.

eviks

a day ago

Distributed incompetence is a hell of a drug and can unfortunately persist until the next technological shift

pseudohadamard

a day ago

I'm hoping the "next technological shift" will be the Butlerian Jihad.

digital_af

21 hours ago

Where I live there are no regular paper tickets anymore, you have to either buy a Deutschlandticket (monthly subscription), multiple ride tickets via the app (signed in of course) or buy the single ride ticket, contactless card payments only without printed tickets. And in some places in Germany tickets bought via the app get valid only after 30 seconds, so if you're in a hurry and just hop on, that's 60€ due to fair evasion, thank you very much.

Wild how these public services just give zero fucks about people who don't want to be tracked or do not have a (contactless) payment card or a smartphone. Totally disgusting.