New Touch Screen Ticket Machines, The Good & The Bad

I bought my 1st tickets today on one of the new machines. The good- the screens are bright, and the machine talks to you. The bad, the learning curve is slow. You don't put in a number for your destination. Instead, you select the number of zones you want a ticket for. To find that out, there is a touch screen search page. What zone will Philadelphia be? The tickets come out at the same speed (and sound), so it probabbly has the same print engine. To buy a senior/handicapped ticket requires a little back and forth to find how to get one. The lines will be long at first.

Where are they installed now? I know most RiverLINE stations and the Lakewood bus station have them (how about a proper TVM at the Toms River bus terminal so you don't have to use cash to buy a ticket from an agent?).

Are there any at the major stations - NYC/Newark/Secaucus/Hoboken? If there are, can you buy connecting tickets, like for the RiverLINE or HBLR (RiverLINE stations apparently now allow you to buy your connecting ticket for Trenton).

There were none in Newark or Secaucus last I was through either one (in the last couple of days).

Why can't they get this right? MTA's machines are very easy to go through and allow you to quickly choose a station without BS like zone numbers.

The new TVMs are at Newark Airport, inside each Terminal's Airtrain entrance. I found them very easy as there's screen that pops up with the most popular trips from the Airport (NYP, NWK, Princeton Jct, Matawan, Metro Park etc..).

I used them on the 2nd floor, North Building, at PABT in NYC.

MetucheNscale wrote: ... To buy a senior/handicapped ticket requires a little back and forth to find how to get one. The lines will be long at first.

I used a new TVM at the River LINE 36th Street station Thursday morning. The senior option appeared on the first screen.
Neither machine accepted cash, so I charged my sixty-five cent ticket.

Back to the drawing board, please -- they're not ugly enough!

Well, that certainly is interesting. Thanks for posting.

Why blue? Maybe they want something that stands out, which it does. But personally, I think it is a bit shall we say ugly. NJT should have just gotten what MN and LIRR has, but, they like to re-invent the wheel.

It was said in another thread that the new RiverLINE TVMs allowed you to buy a continuing ticket for the NEC... I could find no such option yesterday at Pennsauklen/Route 73.

Was the designer a Mets fan????

I used them at EWR. When I saw them, they had a similar to the Metro North / LIRR TVMs (except for the color scheme - yuck and nothing really NJT related - where's the purple?). My hopes were high as I had hopped that NJT finally got it right. The MTA TVMs are fast and very easy to use.

They are easier to use than the old TVMs the positioning of the screen is a benefit for those of us that are taller than 5'-2". They were a bit more user friendly than the old TVMs, but just as slow. Overall, they are a welcomed improvement, but NJT could have done better (aka the MTA TVM).

The machines are really smart- they will ask you if you want your last credit card transaction repeated, and show you what your recent transactions were. If you pick one, it wil be completed without touching the screen again- very good!

But the machines are really stupid too- I travel by NJT bus, and train every day to work thru NJT's busiest train station (Penn., NYC), and bus station PABT, NYC). Yet I can not go to one machine to buy both my train and bus tickets. I can't even buy both my train and bus tickets from two different machines in the same terminal. Dah?

MetucheNscale wrote:But the machines are really stupid too- I travel by NJT bus, and train every day to work thru NJT's busiest train station (Penn., NYC), and bus station PABT, NYC). Yet I can not go to one machine to buy both my train and bus tickets. I can't even buy both my train and bus tickets from two different machines in the same terminal. Dah?

This might not be an oversight but an internal accounting control measure implemented by the beancounters at One Penn Plaza.

Anyone know where the old machines are going? Morristown? Madison? Brick Church?

Already 2 TVMs in Morristown.