In the last year, I've been through over a dozen cities and used public transport in all of them. It is wild just how confusing and complex buying a ticket can be. While some cities obviously take a user-centred approach to ticketing, others appear to take a Kafkaesque delight in a bureaucratic maze of zones, apps, and intricate restrictions. One of the seminal texts in computer systems design…
In the Netherlands we got upgraded last year, just nfc your debit or credit card (or your phone if you use Google / Apple Pay etc). Not a great example of strategic autonomy, nor is it privacy friendly, but it really is easier then ever before. Super tourist-friendly, aside that you basically don’t know how much you’ll spend until you’ve already spent it. Next up they’ll make it work with discounts and subscriptions, as right now you are always charged the full ticket price.
That’s absolutely unacceptable to me.
You can plan your trip online and it’ll show the amount, but i’d argue that’s a different interface. But all that information is not on the machine where you put your card. It’d be nice if they gave tourists a clearer estimation (e.g. bus/tram across town ~€2, train to the closest city ~€15) somehow. Maybe they put it on flyers or a website for tourists? Who knows. Luckily there are no real surprises, it’s just start-up fee + fee per kilometer.