Do Not Buy Tram Ticket…Send SMS

Quite soon people in Brno could pay for their tram ride via SMS… This technological novelty was implemented in Prague in November. Passengers send a special-code SMS and they receive an appropriate confirmation code. When a “ticket” inspector comes the passenger can show him or her the display of the cell phone with the code…

Interesting…the problem is that technologies sometimes do not work the way they should. Several people from Prague complained that they had indeed sent the SMS but then they waited for many minutes for the code, so they had to miss several trams before they could actually board one…

The Brno city authority is still doing some feasibility study of its own. One of the reasons is that the transportation system here is called “integrated public transportation” and it consists of tram/bus/trolley transportation, commuter trains and local buses, so there are numerous combinations of tickets… Good luck in remembering all those codes…