lincasanova

All online purchases and tickets bought for Ave and long distance trains will now have passenger info on them , but coded so as not to invade privacy. The name can be changed up to 15 minutes beforehand. But passengers will need to have ID to board.

PalenQ

ah the pain in Spain will mainly be on the train - what about day trippers who do not always take their passports with them?

adrienne

How is having your name on a ticket an invasion of privacy?

lincasanova

Well, the article said to "protect your privacy", not invade. Everyone will have to have some sort of ID to use tickets on the trains that require this information ( not commuter trains). It does´t say "passport". A credit card or DL will probably suffice.

PalenQ

I wonder what is the why why this policy is taking effect - what's the problemo and why does RENFE care who is using a ticket, especially if it is a full fare ticket. I men if the name can be changed easily up to a few minutes before the train, why or why?

Security? If so seems silly - terrorists will usually have fake IDs - like American passports!

lincasanova

Probably after the sad crash it will make it easier to get in touch with family members. Also, no doubt there is some security issue also. As you may well know, PalenQ,, we seem to have an abundance of AL Qaida trained fellows lurking around getting arrested once in awhile. Fraud was also mentioned.

anyegr

Another possible reason is to stop people who buy up cheap tickets and resell them to make a profit. That certainly happens sometimes in Sweden.

And since I booked travel on both Renfe and Alsa for my trip I can see that my Alsa tickets all have my name clearly printed on them. Is that because they were discount tickets or is it the same for full price tickets?

anyegr

lincasanova: Sorry, I just noticed the part about being able to change passenger names. That means my theory is completely wrong.

Man_in_seat_61

This will be all about stopping fraud and/or ticket scalping. I was always surprised that there were so few anti-fraud checks with Spanish print-at-home tickets.

The French Railways have always required a name and ID with a self-print ticket, the Germans match the ticket with the last 4 digits of the credit card used.

Print-at-home tickets can obviously have multiple copies printed out, and be re-sold, and so on.

lincasanova

Yes, one was able to resell any ticket .. as you could re-print them with the code, even at the station, but that annulled the previously printed one.. so theoretically someone could get to the statin and when their ticket was scanned they could be told that the holder of that ticket already boarded the train.

ribeirasacra

A link(in Spanish) as to why this has been implemented.
http://trenhub.com/blog/los-nuevos-b...no-nominativos
Note is is not just the tickets for the AVE trains either. AVENT and long distance trains are included too.