Ticket Machines in Rome Metro Stations
Oct 13th, 2003, 11:07 AM
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Ticket Machines in Rome Metro Stations
Hi all:
I just returned this past Friday from our three-week trip to England, France, and Italy. We had an absolute blast!
I am working on a full trip report, but wanted to put this out right away in hopes of it helping other poor, soon-to-be-confused souls who are headed to Rome and planning on using ticket machines to buy tickets in the Metro.
The metro tickets are 77 cents. To buy two, for example, it will cost you €1,54. In order to get the machine to work, you have to FIRST insert the 4 cents in any combination of 1 or 2 cent coins, and then insert the rest of your money. The machine DOES give change (thus, it is not necessary to have EXACTLY €1,54), BUT it can only give change in increments of 5 cents, so it is essential that you insert however many cents you have to to make the last digit of your total due a multiple of 5.
For example, if want only one ticket, (total cost: 77 cents), you must insert a 2 cent coin (to make the total due 75 cents . . . which is a multiple of 5) and only then can you insert the rest of your money. If you want three tickets (€2,31), you must put in a 1 cent coin and proceed from there. And so on . . . You can put as much as 5 Euros in the machine and you WILL get change . . . but you HAVE to make the last digit of your total a multiple of 5 cents first. If you don't work it out so that your total is a multiple of 5 cents, the machine will flash a "transaction aborted" message on the LCD screen and spit back all of your money.
I can't tell you how many people we saw standing at these machines trying desperately to make them work. We, ourselves, spent a good half an hour or more trying to figure it out before the light bulb went on over our heads. Of course, in our case, we ended up being late for our Scavi tour of the Vatican and, only the fact that they had inadvertently scheduled us for an Italian language tour and thus were kind enough to move us to an English language tour scheduled for later in the day kept us from being VERY disappointed. In addition, I have noticed several trip reports that have indicated that the ticket machines in the metro stations were "broken" when they were there. I'd be willing to bet that most of them weren't REALLY broken at all, just seemed to be.
Even better than using the machines in the metro station, is to just buy your tickets above ground and you won't have to worry about it. That's what we did the rest of our time in Rome. However, I made it a point to always stop and tell people at the stations how to make the machines work whenever I saw them struggling on our subsequent trips into the stations.
Jennie
I just returned this past Friday from our three-week trip to England, France, and Italy. We had an absolute blast!
I am working on a full trip report, but wanted to put this out right away in hopes of it helping other poor, soon-to-be-confused souls who are headed to Rome and planning on using ticket machines to buy tickets in the Metro.
The metro tickets are 77 cents. To buy two, for example, it will cost you €1,54. In order to get the machine to work, you have to FIRST insert the 4 cents in any combination of 1 or 2 cent coins, and then insert the rest of your money. The machine DOES give change (thus, it is not necessary to have EXACTLY €1,54), BUT it can only give change in increments of 5 cents, so it is essential that you insert however many cents you have to to make the last digit of your total due a multiple of 5.
For example, if want only one ticket, (total cost: 77 cents), you must insert a 2 cent coin (to make the total due 75 cents . . . which is a multiple of 5) and only then can you insert the rest of your money. If you want three tickets (€2,31), you must put in a 1 cent coin and proceed from there. And so on . . . You can put as much as 5 Euros in the machine and you WILL get change . . . but you HAVE to make the last digit of your total a multiple of 5 cents first. If you don't work it out so that your total is a multiple of 5 cents, the machine will flash a "transaction aborted" message on the LCD screen and spit back all of your money.
I can't tell you how many people we saw standing at these machines trying desperately to make them work. We, ourselves, spent a good half an hour or more trying to figure it out before the light bulb went on over our heads. Of course, in our case, we ended up being late for our Scavi tour of the Vatican and, only the fact that they had inadvertently scheduled us for an Italian language tour and thus were kind enough to move us to an English language tour scheduled for later in the day kept us from being VERY disappointed. In addition, I have noticed several trip reports that have indicated that the ticket machines in the metro stations were "broken" when they were there. I'd be willing to bet that most of them weren't REALLY broken at all, just seemed to be.
Even better than using the machines in the metro station, is to just buy your tickets above ground and you won't have to worry about it. That's what we did the rest of our time in Rome. However, I made it a point to always stop and tell people at the stations how to make the machines work whenever I saw them struggling on our subsequent trips into the stations.
Jennie
Oct 13th, 2003, 11:52 AM
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Andre:
Yes, exactly! We had a wonderful time in Italy overall. The people were wonderful and the scenery inspiring.
Still, those dang machines made such an impression on me that I swore that one of the first things I was going to do when I got back was to post a message about it in hopes it would help someone else out!
Jennie
Yes, exactly! We had a wonderful time in Italy overall. The people were wonderful and the scenery inspiring.
Still, those dang machines made such an impression on me that I swore that one of the first things I was going to do when I got back was to post a message about it in hopes it would help someone else out!
Jennie
Oct 13th, 2003, 11:57 AM
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We just got back and found the easiest way to handle this issue was to buy the tickets at the tabacchi near the station. There is no markup for buying them there and it's way easier that stuggling with the ticket machines which don't work half the time no matter how you put the money in.
Oct 13th, 2003, 01:18 PM
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I rode the bus without a ticket a few times, because the machine near my hotel WAS broken (an official sign was posted saying so), and ALL the tobacco shops/stands were either STILL closed at 9:30 AM, or were out. So, I just hopped on the bus, and rode for free. Tried to buy tickets at the metro, and ran into the same ridiculous problem - kept spitting my money out. A Swedish lady next to me was cursing really loudly, because she needed bus tickets, and not one person would help us! Also, I couldn't find any stamps, so I had to mail most of my Rome postcards from another country (which turned out to be quicker, anyway.)
Oct 13th, 2003, 01:26 PM
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Ah, the wonderfulness of La belle Italia.
IIRC, I put a 2E coin into the machine and asked for a ritorno (1.54E) and got a ticket and 0.4E back.
It's still best to buy tickets at the tabacchi shop.
IIRC, I put a 2E coin into the machine and asked for a ritorno (1.54E) and got a ticket and 0.4E back.
It's still best to buy tickets at the tabacchi shop.
Oct 13th, 2003, 01:42 PM
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Ira:
You must have found one of the only machines in Rome that would give you change in increments other than 5 cents.
Later, (several days after our initial problems with the machines) I mentioned it during a conversation I struck up with a native Roman on the train from Rome to Naples and he told me it was a VERY common problem for tourists in Rome and that many Romans made sure to carry extra 1 and 2 cent coins just in case they needed to buy metro tickets from the machines.
Jennie
You must have found one of the only machines in Rome that would give you change in increments other than 5 cents.
Later, (several days after our initial problems with the machines) I mentioned it during a conversation I struck up with a native Roman on the train from Rome to Naples and he told me it was a VERY common problem for tourists in Rome and that many Romans made sure to carry extra 1 and 2 cent coins just in case they needed to buy metro tickets from the machines.
Jennie
Oct 13th, 2003, 05:07 PM
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Jennie,
Your post brought back some of my fondest memories of Italy--people swearing (in Italian, of course) at the metro ticket machines in Rome. Well, that and the memory of my husband selling tickets at the station... Let me explain. We figured out immediately that it would be a lot less frustrating to buy 5 tickets at once 77x5=3.85, but when we had 3 or 4 tickets left over at the end of the trip, I wanted to just keep them as souvenirs. But my husband said no way, asked me what the Italian word for tickets was, walked up to those angry frustrated people fighting the machines and started saying in a very loud voice (sort of like a fruit seller at the market): "Biglietti... biglietti". He actually managed to sell all the tickets immediately (without speaking a word of Italian). We both had a blast (although at the time I, of course, pretended that I didn't know him).
Seriously, though, another alternative to those machines (since there are no human ticket-sellers at most metro stations) is to buy your ticket at a Tabacchi shop (as indicated below) or at any newspaper stand; there is no surcharge for it.
Oops, almost forgot... Another problem we had when we in Italy last December was that they were phasing out old-style tickets and introducing new-style tickets (both cost the same but are a different shape). Meaning: every bus had 2 different kinds of validation machines for 2 different kinds of tickets, and you had to know which one was which. Even if you could figure it out, most of the time the validation machine didn't work anyway, and you had to write your time of entry on the ticket to avoid being fined. Are they still using both types of machines?
Your post brought back some of my fondest memories of Italy--people swearing (in Italian, of course) at the metro ticket machines in Rome. Well, that and the memory of my husband selling tickets at the station...
Let me explain. We figured out immediately that it would be a lot less frustrating to buy 5 tickets at once 77x5=3.85, but when we had 3 or 4 tickets left over at the end of the trip, I wanted to just keep them as souvenirs. But my husband said no way, asked me what the Italian word for tickets was, walked up to those angry frustrated people fighting the machines and started saying in a very loud voice (sort of like a fruit seller at the market): "Biglietti... biglietti". He actually managed to sell all the tickets immediately (without speaking a word of Italian). We both had a blast (although at the time I, of course, pretended that I didn't know him). Seriously, though, another alternative to those machines (since there are no human ticket-sellers at most metro stations) is to buy your ticket at a Tabacchi shop (as indicated below) or at any newspaper stand; there is no surcharge for it.
Oops, almost forgot... Another problem we had when we in Italy last December was that they were phasing out old-style tickets and introducing new-style tickets (both cost the same but are a different shape). Meaning: every bus had 2 different kinds of validation machines for 2 different kinds of tickets, and you had to know which one was which. Even if you could figure it out, most of the time the validation machine didn't work anyway, and you had to write your time of entry on the ticket to avoid being fined. Are they still using both types of machines?
Oct 13th, 2003, 06:11 PM
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Yes, there are two types of machines. When I finally managed to get my %$&%&@% ticket, I had to have a Roman stamp it for me, because neither machine seemed to want to take it. I forget which color/kind of machine it was, though!
Oct 15th, 2003, 06:55 AM
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sansdieu:
We ended up doing the exact same thing as you did! When we found ourselves in need of a ticket and w/out any 1 or 2 cent coins, we bought 5 tickets! We did end up using all of ours, though. We were in Rome for 6 days and were ALL over that place.
Jennie
We ended up doing the exact same thing as you did! When we found ourselves in need of a ticket and w/out any 1 or 2 cent coins, we bought 5 tickets! We did end up using all of ours, though. We were in Rome for 6 days and were ALL over that place.
Jennie
