Ticketing machines
why is it that when i travel to Taiwan and take a local train, I can get a ticket out of the decades-old low-tech machine in under 30 seconds but Northern's fancy touchscreen machines take about a minute and a half if you're lucky?
Hint: the machine in Taiwan has lots of physical buttons. a few are blinking: adult single, return, .... so i push "adult single".
A grid of buttons illuminates with the destinations. Even though the names are sorted by their Chinese names and not alphabetically, I find my destination (Xinzhuang) with a brief systematic search.
The coin slot blinks and a 7-segment display tells me how much cash to insert (not a lot of course).
A tiny ticket is issued, replete with magnetic strip, about 1/5 of the area of a credit card.
BLISS.
Coming home to Manchester Airport. 5 touchscreen machines, 4 out of order, about 10 people queuing. Ah well, i guess I'll miss the next train.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
