When transit passes were designed by hand (2022)

8/2/2026 at 5:27:37 PM

> Milwaukee claims to be the inventor of the weekly transit pass

… so, really? In the 20th century? I’m _almost_ certain that the Dublin and Kingstown Railway (1834) did season tickets; remember seeing one once. Even if not that, surely some one did in the century between the invention of commuter rail and the Milwaukee one?

(The Dublin and Kingstown railway, allegedly the first commuter railway in the world, is interesting in that it was clearly designed before people had figured out what commuter rail was _for_; on launch it was every half hour on weekdays… and every 15 mins on Sunday. These days it’s every ten mins on weekdays and every 20 mins on Sunday… But in the very early days there was definitely an impression that using commuter rail was a leisure activity.

It was also extended with the world’s first atmospheric railway, which lasted about ten years before being replaced with something more sensible. Today, Dublin has about four commuter lines, which just goes to show that first mover advantage doesn’t count for much.)

by rsynnott

8/2/2026 at 10:32:11 PM

> I’m _almost_ certain that the Dublin and Kingstown Railway (1834) did season tickets

Season and weekly are different things (obviously). If you narrow your claim down enough, of course you can be the first (patents or Guinness book of world records being prome examples.)

But the article isn't about that, it's about the design of the tickets. And they are a thing of beauty.

by scoot

8/3/2026 at 7:30:56 AM

In the UK Rail network I have bought there weekly, monthly, and yearly season tickets.

What is this separation of weekly?

by pasc1878

8/2/2026 at 4:43:37 PM

I would love to see more of this mindset - bring something new and unique in to the world, instead of mass produced, least price per unit mentality, like how car colors are trending towards black and white.

by sharms

8/2/2026 at 7:05:20 PM

In general we need to free designers, artists, marketing people, engineers, anyone creative really, from the tyranni of spreadsheet, shareholder interests and risk minimization. We're becoming so incredibly scared of any perceived risk that the world become bland. Business are afraid of offending, or not appealing to some group, or in some way hurting the bottom line. Personally we're scared that our homes and cars will lose resell value or that our choices makes us stick out (that is if we're given a choice, because everything we buy must have the broadest appeal).

If you have children, let them pick colours, they aren't yet scared of bold choices and don't needs to explain why your hen house if some weird shade of pink or why that one rooms is a random shade of mint green. They just liked the colour and thought it would be awesome.

by mrweasel

8/2/2026 at 5:58:53 PM

This design also serves a business purpose. You can see at a glance if someone has this week's pass without carefully checking the date. Our local bus company does something similar - the day passes have a random word for the day so you can't just print one at home, at least not without colluding with someone who's already bought a ticket.

by masfuerte

8/2/2026 at 9:57:17 PM

Yup, that's the utilitarian reason for having a different design for each week. Most companies didn't go so far however. But even the monthly passes that I used in Romania during my youth were printed with different background colors every month (http://1.stpt.ro/forum/index.php?s=9978f358f69f69336b0cefcc5...).

by rob74

8/3/2026 at 12:38:01 AM

It reminds me of the logos on https://www.pouet.net/ Each time you reload, there will be a different logo at the top.

by smallerize

8/2/2026 at 5:15:16 PM

Not for transit please.

This kind of thing is illegible (not to mention inaccessible) for visitors. Someone comes to your city and they want to ride a train instead of driving their rental car into your downtown. Your transit requires a card. They're not comfortable with your language, they have to find a machine, and the first one doesn't work right.

They finally get a machine that works, after standing in line behind several other people. It turns out they need to buy a new special card and then load it with one of a number of confusing products.

They get your pretty card. Then they have to pay attention to where that card is at all times, and buy exactly the right number of tokens to load onto it (potentially). They can only buy tokens in a few select locations in your city, realize they have run out, and end up Ubering for the rest of their trip. Or they have to buy the timed card that expires in four days, halfway through their trip, and remember to get the next one in two days because it's not on sale yet.

We have wallets built into our phones now. Transit is a utility - it should universally take tap to pay, and more major cities are now rolling that out. Zero planning, zero extra "new and unique" objects to keep track of.

If you want a date based pass for a long visit instead of paying per trip, both Apple and Google have a way for you to buy transit passes directly from their wallet. You can always make that virtual card pretty.

by Schiendelman

8/2/2026 at 6:13:47 PM

I don't see how your point contradicts GP's. There is no reason why you can't have a reliable machine that sells a reliable daily or weekly pass with a nice design. The rest of your comment about Ubers seems to be just a massive straw man.

Tap to pay may work if you actually use your phone as your wallet. From what I see around me, most people don't. And on this website in particular you have surely seen people advocating for cash over privacy concerns. Nor would I be confident that my card will work flawlessly in another city half a planet away before I get there. I will buy a weekly pass from a machine, though, especially if it looks cute enough that I can bring it home as souvenir.

by pibaker

8/2/2026 at 8:59:30 PM

This reads like a nervous breakdown at the thought of having to buy a ticket from A to B. It’s really not that complicated in most countries with functional public transport.

by refactor_master

8/3/2026 at 9:25:23 AM

> It’s really not that complicated in most countries with functional public transport.

They are not wrong, just look at Germany before the Deutschlandticket, but that one is useless for tourists so they still are stuck in the Holy Roman Empire of Public Transport Systems [1].

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Karte_de...

by mschuster91

8/2/2026 at 5:38:09 PM

The way I see it there is a bifurcation here: some people value convenience so they just use their regular credit card to pay per trip with no discounts; others don’t mind the mental overhead of getting a transit card, understanding the fare products, selecting the optimal fare products, standing in line to load the fare products onto the card in order to save money. It’s good to provide both.

by kccqzy

8/2/2026 at 10:19:54 PM

> Travel somewhere else for business or pleasure

> Insist that everything work indistinguishably from how it works at home

Not gonna make it

by anigbrowl

8/2/2026 at 5:35:36 PM

Nothing you say is necessarily wrong or bad, but it is why we can’t have beautiful things and only utilitarian shit.

by HumblyTossed

8/2/2026 at 5:44:24 PM

Utilitarians see the utility of everything and the value of nothing.

by clickety_clack

8/2/2026 at 5:47:12 PM

Some things should be a utility. Nice is important but transit should fade into the background while you live life. Don't make them ugly but utility needs to be first.

by bluGill

8/2/2026 at 10:03:28 PM

Well, some people spend a significant amount of their time on transit. Of course, utility should come first, but I also would totally support trying to make them look nice (even if most people wouldn't notice nowadays because they stare at their phones the whole time).

by rob74

8/3/2026 at 11:08:50 AM

The us spends 4 to 7 times as much as anyone else to build transit. While consultants and labor get the money a lot of the overruns is really a desire for grand art. As others show, nice can be had much for much cheaper. The choice isn't ugly be beautiful, it is how much to spend in beautiful.

I want to get places and the money spent on beautiful means despite being a rich country the us cannot afford great transit.

by bluGill

8/2/2026 at 5:59:12 PM

You can have lots of beautiful things. You can't REQUIRE beautiful things. Government services are a requirement.

by Schiendelman

8/2/2026 at 10:09:10 PM

Thinking like this is exactly what's wrong with public transport in most of the world. It has to be there, but god forbid you make it actually attractive, then people might use it more and it would cost even more. Better to keep it at a barely tolerable level and save the money for what really matters, like road projects.

by rob74

8/2/2026 at 10:18:06 PM

You can't REQUIRE beautiful things.

Sure you can.

At least in the United States, there are many state and local laws requiring a certain percentage of the money spent on building projects be dedicated to making them look good, and to putting art inside them.

One example of many: https://sfca.hawaii.gov/art-in-public-places-program/percent...

Usually it's public projects, but often it's both public and private construction.

by reaperducer

8/2/2026 at 4:46:56 PM

I remember using muni tokens in SF. It was great and I often had a stockpile of them so that when friends/family visited I could give them out to help them get around the city.

Carrying cash/something physical in general to pay for transit has basically gone away. I suspect this has helped ridership but there are a few losses too.

by jmward01

8/2/2026 at 4:59:49 PM

When my stepmother died we went through her things and found all sorts of ticket and metro stubs from the year she lived in Paris. I’m saddened by the loss of these ephemera that carry a little story. I went to Radiohead last December and the supposed “memory ticket” was just a flyer basically, with nothing personal about it.

On the other hand, a few years ago I was in Paris and when the metro spit my ticket back at me it blew away in the wind. I suppose there were some downsides…

by CalRobert

8/2/2026 at 4:50:45 PM

Some places it remains - and I do find something cute about the physical train ticket that says NYP NYP that I used just today.

by pepperoni_pizza

8/2/2026 at 5:05:00 PM

Having something as mundane as a transit pass be designed so beautifully installs a sense of civic pride. Plus, it employs artists. Both of these things are important for a community.

Transit passes may have been phased out in a lot of places, but there are lots of opportunities for a city to design and display public art.

by dfxm12

8/3/2026 at 7:02:36 AM

I'd imagine that counterfeit-prevention is part of it. This theory predicts that they changed the design regularly, and each one was significantly different so operators could quickly tell whether it was the new design.

by gblargg

8/2/2026 at 6:40:39 PM

On this topic, I highly recommend the New York Transit Museum

by someperson

8/2/2026 at 7:09:51 PM

Tangibly related - stadelijk in Amsterdam has that exhibit in which you get to experience 90' schiphol, with the pa and the glowing signs. It's really good

by yard2010

8/2/2026 at 11:00:54 PM

These days we just get repulsive AI slop plastered on everything.

by Gigachad

8/3/2026 at 3:24:07 AM

Didn't early Victorian Train lines have shareholders tokens which functionally entitled the holder to free travel? I am sure this was an understood concept probably handed down from Turnpike and Canal days.

by ggm

8/2/2026 at 4:45:07 PM

Not much to say except it’s a nice collection and I’m glad someone is cataloguing these historical items.

by mc32

8/2/2026 at 9:04:37 PM

wow those passes are absolutely gorgeous. no wonder to ias frere-jones is keen on them.

by keeganpoppen