I read a great story this morning on Apple's Hot News RSS feed. Since I'm in a train geek + Apple geek family, to see the two geeky pleasures combine to make train travel easier was like, well, chocolate and peanut butter combining to make Reese's cups!
By the end of this summer, Amtrak will have fully transitioned to a digital ticket scanning capability. Amtrak conductors will use Apple iPhone bar code scanners to read passengers' tickets and manage their manifests. These iPhones will be replacing the decades-old tradition of manually punching train tickets. Perhaps you've seen some of your train conductors using the scanners already.
This upgrade will also help conductors more easily manage available seating on a train and will help Amtrak's central processing better manage last minute schedule changes, disabled passengers, and statuses of train maintenance.
Most of me is exclaiming, "It's about time!!!" Think about how far airlines have come with bar-code scanning of boarding passes. I can now fly Delta airlines with only the barcode on my email ticket confirmation out of some airports. I think that's awesome and will save so many trees. Amtrak is headed in that direction, particularly with their still-evolving mobile app for iOS devices and their mobile site for other smartphone platforms.
Yet, there's a part of me that will miss the tradition of manually hole-punching train tickets. For those who have seen the film version of The Polar Express and those scenes of the Conductor whimsically punching words into the tickets, I can say I have experienced train travel with similarly skilled conductors who will punch words and pictures into my and my kids' tickets. Part of the fun of traveling on the Long Island Rail Road was seeing what shaped hole-punch the conductors had on that day. Crescent moon? Heart? Triangle? Star?
Read more about the Amtrak transition to digital rail passenger management at the New York Times.
