Rights of Passage: Railway Tickets and Passenger Emplacement

Abstract

Among the most important yet least analysed elements of transport culture, is the ticket. It confers on its holder the right to travel, access to a station and train space, generally a seat. Through its enormous range of types and forms, which proliferated during the nineteenth century, the ticket facilitated the division of mobile communities, not just in terms of class of mobility but also the function of travel, whether it was for the purposes of study, recreation, work and so on. During the late twentieth century, many of these ticket classifications were abandoned in favour of more omnibus forms of ticketing, especially in relation to intra-urban travel. It coincided with changes to ticket procurement, provision and collection and that underwent progressive automation. The development of travel analogues of credit cards such as Sydney’s Opal Card, which are rendering the cardboard ticket and the processes associated with it obsolete, has furthered these automating tendencies.

Keywords: Automation, classification, dividing practices, excursion tickets, Thomas Edmondson, Opal Card, surveillance, railways tickets, working men’s tickets.