[GuB-42]

Paris has about the worst card system I have ever seen. In other places I have been to where there is a transport card system, anyone can buy a card, usually in a vending machine in a convenient location, and do everything with it. Locals may have nominative cards that work in the same way, but are also tied to an account.

In Paris you have the following (at least you did a year ago):

- Paper tickets

- Prepaid, non-nominative cards that can be used for single trips and day-long unlimited travel plans, but no more than that

- Prepaid, nominative cards that support day-long and week-long travel plans, but not single trips

- Nominative cards that can do all of the above and more, but only for locals

- There is also the app, that has other limitations

And there is also some weirdness with connections. Metro to train may or may not be possible on a single ticket. Metro to RER usually is, but Metro to tram is not, unless maybe if you have the right card.

Why can't they do a single card that does everything, like in all other countries? Or maybe two, a non-nominative and a nominative one.

[midoridensha]

>In other places I have been to where there is a transport card system, anyone can buy a card, usually in a vending machine in a convenient location, and do everything with it. Locals may have nominative cards that work in the same way, but are also tied to an account.

Yep, this is how it is in Japan (but without the account bit). You buy a Suica or Passmo card at the airport when you arrive for 500 yen, "charge" it with a bunch of cash (which you helpfully get at the 7-bank ATM down the hall), then you can use that *everywhere in the whole country* for public transit, and many other things too if you want, like vending machines and many restaurants. (It's generally better to use a credit card for places that take it, but still, the option exists.) There's no advantage for locals either; everyone gets the same card, and it's not linked to any account.

Finally, when you're ready to leave the country, you can visit the customer service counter and surrender the card, and they will give you (in cash) the remaining balance on the card, plus the 500 yen deposit.

Also, unlike in Paris, you don't have to worry about any rude service people in Japan. Everyone is always polite here.

[iggldiggl]

The Dutch made some similar mistakes. A certain number of discounts (amongst them any sort of child-rate fares!) are only available with a personal OV chipkaart, but

a) for a long time a personal card was only obtainable with a Dutch bank account and/or address of residence

b) the only improvement these days is that residents of the countries with a direct border with the Netherlands (i.e. Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany) can get one, too, but it still needs to be ordered in advance. And anybody else is still left out, even though e.g. a resident of Lille (in France) is actually living closer to the Dutch border than a German from Munich.

Another thing is that with the switch from paper tickets to the OV chipkaart they sort of got rid of cross-operator through tickets, which means that

a) e.g. when travelling on the national railway network, you now need to pay attention whether you're also changing train operators when happening to change trains – in that case you must check out and back in again

b) checking out and back in resets reset the distance-based fare price degression, so it's more expensive. I think they continued tweaking some things here, so it's no longer quite as egregious as when originally introduced, but it's still somewhat of a step back compared to real through tickets.

And for anonymous chipkaarts there's a relatively high minimum top-up (technically 20 €, effectively 16 € as you're allowed 4 € of overdraft) required in order to be allowed to travel on the railways at all, which is unattractive for occasional travellers and shortish trips that might otherwise only cost a few euro (in which case a single use ticket might be a better option, as it "only" carries an 1 € surcharge).