Ticket machine practice: a pretend train and bus ticket machine

A real ticket machine

• Machines differ a great deal. The screens, the words, the buttons and the order change from one transit system to the next. What follows is how it often goes, not how any one machine works.
• The first screen. Many machines wait on a screen that says to touch it, and many offer more than one language right at the start.
• What a ride costs often depends on where the trip ends, and on some lines on the time of day. Other systems have one price for any ride. The machine shows the price before it asks for money.
• Looking costs nothing. Going through the screens to see a price, and then pressing Cancel, is an ordinary thing to do.
• One way, or round trip. One way is there only. A round trip is there and back, and on many lines it costs the same as two one-way tickets.
• Reduced fares. Many systems have a lower fare for older adults, people with disabilities, children, or people with low incomes. Who gets it, and what card or ID has to be shown, is each system’s own rule. A worker, or the system’s phone number, can say.
• Paying with a card. The machine may ask whether the card is credit or debit. A debit card asks for its PIN. A credit card may ask for a ZIP code: the five-number postal code of the address where the card’s bill goes.
• Paying with cash. Bills go in one at a time, flat, the way the picture next to the slot shows. A bill that comes back out can be turned around or smoothed and tried again. Many machines give change only in coins, some give back only so much, and some do not take large bills; a sign on the machine usually says.
• The tray. The ticket drops into a tray near the bottom of the machine, and the change and the receipt often land there too. It is worth a look before walking away.
• After the machine. Some tickets have to be stamped, scanned or tapped before the ride, and on many trains a worker comes through to see them. Keeping the ticket until the trip is over is the common advice.
• A fare card is a card that holds money or passes for rides, and is tapped or swiped at a gate or on a bus. Some systems charge for a new card, and some let a bank card or a phone be tapped at the gate instead.
• A real machine has a clock. Left alone for a while, it usually goes back to its first screen, and starting again loses nothing. If a machine keeps money and gives no ticket, the usual way is to note the number on the machine and the time, and to tell a worker or call the number printed on the machine.

How the lessons work

• The pretend machine is the dark box. The pale part at its top is its screen: it shows what the machine is asking, the fares or the sale so far, and its choices, which are buttons on the screen itself.
• One button stays under the screen the whole time: “Cancel”. When a step asks for it, it stops the sale and nothing is paid. Pressed at any other time, the pretend machine stays where it is and says so; a real machine would stop and go back to its start.
• The box with the dashed edge is your hands. Five buttons stay there: “Touch the screen”, “Put the bank card in, and take it out”, “Feed a bill into the slot”, “Take what is in the tray” and “Take the change”.
• The line under those buttons says how things stand: what is in your hand, how much cash has gone in, and where the fare card is.
• The buttons are pressed with a mouse, a finger, or the Tab and Enter keys.
• Nothing is typed. “Type the ZIP code” and “Type the PIN” each stand for typing one; the page takes no numbers. A real PIN or card number is never something to type on a website. The bank card has a page of its own: Card reader practice.
• “Feed a bill into the slot” feeds one made-up bill each time it is pressed. The screen says how much is still owed, and then how much change is owed to you.
• The fare card in lesson 5 is made up too. “Put the fare card in” and “Take the fare card back” come up only when the machine asks for them. Many real fare cards are held against a reader instead.
• The yellow line under the machine says what the last press did, and what comes now.
• A choice the step is not after changes nothing: the machine stays on the same screen and the yellow line says so. A real machine would go on with that choice.
• The steps choose “Full fare” every time, only because the page cannot know who you are. On this pretend line a round trip costs two one-way tickets.
• The pretend machine counts nothing against you. A button pressed out of turn changes nothing, and no train is missed.
• “Next step” answers only when the step is done. Until then it is gray. On the last step of a lesson it says “Finish the lesson”. “Start this lesson again” asks for other stations and other fares.
• The page waits. There is no countdown, and nothing is timed or counted.

Every time the page is built, a program makes 6,000 lessons, half in English and half in Spanish, and walks through their 12,000 steps, pressing the buttons itself: that the choice a step is after is on the screen, that no step is done before it begins, that the right presses in order end the step, that every other button and every other choice leaves the machine where it is, that Cancel pressed out of turn cancels nothing, that the machine shows no total before the sale is whole, that the total is the fare times the trips times the tickets, that nothing comes out of the machine before it is paid, that no bill is fed once nothing is owed, that the change is the cash less the total, that the fare card ends with what it had plus what was added, and that both languages ask for the same presses, but for the language itself.

What this page does not do

• It buys nothing and pays for nothing, and reaches no transit system and no bank.
• It is not any real machine. A real machine’s screens, words, order and buttons will be different, and its stations and fares are its own.
• It does not practice tapping a card or a phone, a transit app, coins, a monthly or weekly pass, a transfer, a seat on a long-distance train, a ticket for a bicycle, or the gate after the machine.
• It does not know the fares, the times or the rules of any system, who gets a reduced fare, or what a ticket bought on board costs. The signs in the station and the system’s workers are the ones to ask.
• It cannot practice the hands: finding the slot, turning a bill the right way, reaching into the tray.
• It has not been tried by people. A program tried the page with a mouse and a keyboard in one browser. It has not been tried on a touch screen, with a screen reader, a switch or an eye tracker.
• It keeps no record of lessons done, gives no certificate and makes no promise about how any real trip will go.