NJT adds web-based ticket ordering

In the year 2023, I find it hard to believe why someone would use this over the mobile app, but here we are:

https://webtickets.njtransit.com

Currently supports RVL and ACL only.

The NJT mobile app is pretty bad from the experience of myself and a few friends. Half the time it doesn't work, or doesn't accept the valid credit/debit cards you try to put in for payments.

Personally have never had an issue in my decade of using it. Apple Pay, PayPal, WageWorks are all fine. Have had more issues with some of the TVMs on the platforms.

Unlike the app which requires the purchaser's phone to be shown to the ticket taker on the train, using this new function and printing paper copies the purchaser can give copies to family members, etc. and need not accompany them on the train. Perhaps that is the rationale.

The family member piece is what I though of first.

The second reason.... at least once or twice a month, I'd be on the train with an almost dead battery on my phone, and no way to charge it for the ticket check. Never had that problem with my punch card ticket or the paper monthly I kept in my work ID lanyard...

"supports RVL and ACL only": well, that sheds a little light on my experience. Back in July, I was in Belmar, heading home to Pennsylvania. The ticket machine was broken. An NJT guy in a pickup truck said he would report it, even though reporting it wasn't his job. And he said to tell the conductor about it, and the conductor would waive the onboard surcharge.

Maybe four other people were waiting with me for an afternoon train. Only one had a ticket. The conductor on the Bay Head-Long Branch shuttle said he wasn't dealing with it and told us to buy our tickets at Long Branch. But the train got to Long Branch six minutes late, and it was time for the New York train to depart. I told a conductor on the platform, and he told us to get on board.

I didn't have enough cash to buy a ticket, and the conductor said I would have to use my phone to buy a ticket using a credit card. I didn't have the NJ Transit app on my phone, so the conductor told me to take my time.

I opened the NJT website and saw web ticketing in three easy steps. First step: enter your origin and destination stations. I typed Belmar, but when I tried to enter Trenton as the destination, "Belmar" disappeared. I tried several times, and then thought that maybe it would accept only entries from the pull-down menus. I tried them and saw that they listed only Atlantic City line stations.

So I installed the app, set up an account, and tried to buy a one-way from Belmar to Trenton. By this time the train was approaching Perth Amboy, and when I almost had a ticket, I got a "network error" and was advised to try again later. I gave up, and when I got to Rahway I bought my one-way Belmar-Trenton ticket from a machine.

I reported all this using an NJT online complaint form, with train numbers and everything, and was told to call the ticketing department and explain it all over the phone. I didn't.

My guess for why it's those two lines is because it's the ones with the lowest ridership (or perhaps the lowest usage of the NJT app?). Presumably they will eventually expand this to other lines.

NJT would do well to work with the major 3 carriers to make sure that there is sufficient coverage along their lines. I would think it would be a win-win for everyone involved, but perhaps I'm missing something.

It's not the coverage on the line, it is signal inside a metal tube. NJT can provide repeaters or (gasp) wifi like others do. Metra added free wifi when they went to the app as the primary ticketing channel.

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Not what I was talking about. Poster above hit a server issue while being outside on the coast line. There are tons of spots along the River Line that have zero or minimal coverage. This has nothing to do with a single metal tube. NJT also absolutely cannot be providing "repeaters" for cell service inside a tunnel that they do not even own for carriers that they do not operate. That's why I said they should work with carriers to install towers alongside ROW that they actually own and make the carriers pay for that, not waste their own money on.

No signal since 5G went to full power?

I know that in our area, the dead spots have been vastly reduced as the 5G rollout was finished up.

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lensovet wrote: ↑Wed Oct 25, 2023 9:25 pm Not what I was talking about. Poster above hit a server issue while being outside on the coast line. There are tons of spots along the River Line that have zero or minimal coverage. This has nothing to do with a single metal tube. NJT also absolutely cannot be providing "repeaters" for cell service inside a tunnel that they do not even own for carriers that they do not operate. That's why I said they should work with carriers to install towers alongside ROW that they actually own and make the carriers pay for that, not waste their own money on.

If the carriers' marketing studies indicated that such installations made business sense, the carriers would install them on their own initiative. Neither NJT nor any other part of the State of NJ government can force a private company to install towers at that private company's expense.

Carriers can't install things on their own initiative without the approval of the property owners. It takes two to tango. NJT would be smart to proactively engage with them and offer their ROW for installation, potentially offering a simplified/fast-tracked process to gain approvals, etc.

Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that. Not really rocket science. Other agencies have done it. But NJT is busy adding 20-year-old technology like paper tickets you can print at home (how many people even have a printer at home these days?) instead of thinking to the future like working with regional agencies to have a single unified transit card for the NY metro.

This may be more of an IT upgrade project where they have EOL and scalability items that needed to be addressed. If the ticketing system runs on a mainframe, web-based screens are a solution to replace internal terminals that have been used to manage the system. Once you have this component built, then making it accessible externally to the general public seems like a logically step, especially if the objective is to have more people use eTicketing as one does not need to download the app.

NJ Transit likely needs to support legacy systems, such as the ticketing machine, while needing to evolve their systems. My guess is that they will use their 'new' web-based platform to offer My Account services, where one stores their contact, billing, etc info and can retrieve their current and past tickets, faster access to their favorite routes and timetables, etc. As these systems come aboard, then NJ Transit will have better info on its customers for route planning and maybe even things as simple as the percentage of their customers using eTickets. The latter will likely play a role if they decide to modify how tickets are checked.

All this already exists in the app and has existed there for over a decade.

NJT also has at least three different types of accounts: app account, access link account, and online alerts account. I haven’t checked whether this web ticketing system introduces a fourth. The more the merrier?

FYI looks like this now supports all rail lines.

Can confirm that it is a fourth account type with its own, dedicated login that is separate from AccessLink, NJT mobile app, and online alerts.