Smartphone train tickets are not without complications - Yorkshire Post Letters

You report that transport analyst Tony Lodge is advocating the use of smartphones to enable one to buy a ticket for train travel (The Yorkshire Post, May 18).

Such a method is not without its problems. Not everyone owns a smartphone and of those who do some find it difficult to use them.

People can forget to charge smartphones.

If payment depends on internet banking, not everyone has internet banking.

As a result of these problems, smartphones should not be the only means to buy tickets to travel by train.

I am all in favour of retaining existing manned ticket offices, and for at least their current opening hours.

I always use them if available as I prefer to exchange brief words such as thank you.

Where ticket offices are no longer available, then I would like to see a return to guards issuing tickets on trains.

At the very least, manned offices and guards take you through the complications of buying a ticket and hopefully ensure you have been issued with the correct ticket.