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E-tickets (ticketless travel) on Italian rail
There's a novelty on Italian rail that might be useful for travellers
who don't live in Italy. You can now buy your tickets for Eurostar Italia trains online at www.trenitalia.it and travel without a ticket. The conductor has a little palm computer that will have your name and the seat you reserved and you just have to show him a valid ID (your passport). For safety, I would print out the confirmation page and carry it with me. This service seems to be available only on the Italian-language version of the website, but there doesn't seem to be any restriction on where you live. In order to buy the tickets, you have to register with the trenitalia site, but you no longer need an Italian tax number to do so. You need to give a valid email address, where your password will be sent, and make sure that the tickets are reserved in the name as it appears on the ID of the person who will be making the trip. The same name must appear on the credit card that's used to make the purchase. I recently got two tickets to Rome this way. I had reserved them in my husband's name, only to find out that I couldn't use my own credit card. No problem, I used his. When we got to the station, just to be sure I didn't need any ticket, I showed the ticket agent the confirmation page I had printed. He had never seen a "ticketless travel" page before and was really a bit puzzled by it. On the one hand, his computer didn't have the seats listed as awaiting ticket pickup. On the other hand, he hadn't heard that one could travel without a ticket. He suggested that we try to get a ticket from the ticket machine, using the confirmation code. The ticket machine gave us a ticket, so we thought that maybe the ticketless travel idea was a mistake on my part. On the train, however, the conductor confirmed that ticketless travel was indeed a reality. However, our name didn't appear on his palm computer. We assume that it's because we got a physical ticket, thus cancelling our name from the ticketless list. Note that this mode of buying tickets only works on Eurostar trains, which have all-reserved seats. On another topic, I noticed that the trains were rather full when we were travelling. We went to Rome (on the Rome-Ancona line) on a Friday afternoon and returned on Monday morning. I had no trouble getting the Friday tickets just a few hours before the trip (online), but the train was pretty full when we travelled. We bought the Monday tickets from a ticket machine in Termini station on Sunday afternoon, and already we couldn't get two seats together in 2nd class for Monday morning. The machine doesn't warn you of these little inconveniences, it just gives you a ticket that doesn't match your request. We got two seats near each other, and I traded with the person in the seat next to my husband. Another new feature is that all Eurostar trains, as of today, are 100% nonsmoking. Intercity trains have been nonsmoking for a while. I believe that only the expresso trains (very slow and stopping at nearly every station) have smoking cars now. On some lines, there are hardly any such trains. ----------- Barbara Vaughan My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup |
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E-tickets (ticketless travel) on Italian rail
Another new feature...
Terrific information--thanks Barbara! |
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