Public Transport – Don’t Make Me Think! – Terence Eden’s Blog

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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 is "Don't Make Me Think". Every time a service forces the user into making a decision, it is placing a cognitive burden on them. Computers' jobs are to make things easier for us fleshy meatbags.

There are some intractable problems with navigating unfamiliar spaces (looking at you Kyoto Station!) and a transport authority can't publish signs and make announcements in every conceivable language, but there's one thing they can control - ticketing.

Let me take you through some of the public transport ticket experiences I had - and explain how easy or hard they were to use.

Basel, Switzerland - free

Upon checking in to our hotel I was given a free Basel Card. It entitled me to free public transport across the city.

Zero extra cost. I didn't have to remember to take a physical card with me - the details were emailed as a PDF directly from the hotel on check-in.

I didn't have to show the bus driver when I entered a tram. If a ticket inspector was present, they could have asked to scan it.

This is close to the platonic ideal of "Don't Make Me Think" public transport. I didn't have to work out zones, fares, or timings. I didn't need to interact with people or machines. I didn't worry that I was somehow doing it wrong and was going to get shouted at.

Milano, Italy - contactless

I tapped my credit card on the reader. Whether it was a bus, tram, or metro the process was the same. Tap, wait a few milliseconds, beep. On the metro the gates opened automatically. On the tram, I just sat down after the beep.

The fares have a bit of complexity based on how frequently you travel. If you catch another bus within 90 minutes it only counts as one fare.

I didn't care because the daily price was capped.

Once I'd taken a few journeys it wasn't going to cost me any more. With a fee-free credit card it was simplicity itself.

If I had been on an extremely tight budget, I might have done some thinking - but as the daily cap was less than the price of a cocktail, I didn't bother.

Warsaw - paper ticket validation

I walked up to a touchscreen kiosk, selected the 🇬🇧 flag, and bought a 3 day paper ticket for a few € using contactless. The machine spat out a small paper ticket.

I hopped onto a tram, shoved the ticket in a slot and the machine printed a timestamp on it. Well, in theory. It didn't work the first few times for inscrutable reasons.

From then on, I didn't have to do anything. I jumped on whatever public transport I wanted. Only once did a ticket inspector come round demanding to see everyone's proof of validity.

The ticket was a slightly inconvenient size for my wallet - being much smaller than a credit card - and I think the kiosk should have validated it automatically. But, for general transport purposes, it was great at not forcing me to think.

Tallinn - scan the app

Install an app, choose ticket type, pay, done.

Every time I entered public transport, open the app, click the ticket, wave the resultant QR over a scanner.

Obviously choosing a ticket type is a little thinky. Do I want a single ticket, a day pass, something longer?

I'm not averse to installing an app when necessary. Thankfully, this transit app worked on GrapheneOS. There was an optional registration step which I skipped because I was unlikely to come back any time soon.

Riga - scan the bus

OK, this was just weird!

Much like above, install app, choose ticket, pay.

Despite buying an all-you-can-eat ticket, I still had to register on every bus/tram I got on. That meant hopping on, finding a QR code, opening the app, and trying to scan it while the driver attempted a new land-speed record.

Melbourne - annoying

We wanted to visit a mate in the suburbs of Melbs. For this we needed to buy a plastic card. We then needed to load it up with (I think) multiples of $5. Our return fare was about $7.50. So our actual journey cost something like double what the fare was.

There was no obvious way to get a refund for the credit amount, nor for the cards. So we gave them to a friend to distribute to any other tourists she hosted.

Paris - ridiculous

Fuck Paris. The only way to buy a metro ticket is to download an app. Fair enough. But, after downloading the app it tells you to install another app !

What the actual fuck? A convoluted, messy, and frustrating situation which has resulted in awful reviews for them.

Trains and metro travel require separate tickets at different prices. You can't easily hop from one...