With reference to this week's correspondence in the Croydon Guardian on the system for buying tickets on the tram.

Never mind if it's tipping down with rain, if the machine is not giving change, if there is a queue of several would-be passengers in front of you, if the tram you want is at the stop and is not going to wait and there isn't another for half an hour to the destination you want you have only one

option to buy a ticket at a machine that, even after recent changes, seems to demand

A-level computer science from would-be travellers.

This is all so unnecessary.

On the continent, where trams have been in use for decades, one buys a ticket similar in size to a credit card at

almost any newsagent. This is valid for 10 journeys.

One inserts it in a small

machine at the entrance to the tram, which stamps it with the time and date so there is no

argument as to whether or not it is valid.

This eliminates the problem that has happened to me buying a ticket to find no tram comes and having to board a bus and pay again; yes, one can get a refund but the time it takes from my working day

(I am self-employed) costs more than my tram tickets for months.

It also eliminates the very real danger of violent crime as ticket machines are broken into or those emptying the machines are attacked.

Would it not be possible for someone from Tramlink to visit Brussels, for example and re-think their whole fare-paying process ?

Jacqueline M Staniforth

Park Hill,

Croydon

October 23, 2001 17:00