Italy train question - Trenitalia website says must check in for regional train?

I think it’s maybe a roundabout way of telling you to validate the Regionale ticket before boarding the train?

Roberto may know.

When is that trip? Which site are you trying to book on?

^^ It's on the official Trenitalia website. Trips I'm looking at are a weekday in Sept. Select the journey Lecce to Napoli and pick an offer that only has one change of train.

It's a new thing, think at "online validation" of e-tickets (aka the QR code you receive via email when you get a Regional train ticket on the web).

The silly idea of calling this process "check-in" (because English words are cool even if they mean something different) will cause pages and pages of misunderstanding on the internet.

After years of complaints, finally Regional trains e-tickets can be changed. Any time you want. You can take another Regional train running on another day, as long as you log in on trenitalia.com and make the change before the day of travel.

But always remember that Trenitalia hates us all. For mysterious reasons in return the evil minds behind Trenitalia expect everybody to have a data connection and validate also Regional trains e-tickets. In short, we will receive an email with a button to push before getting on.

I wrote "Mysterious reasons" because nobody has been able to understand the benefit of adding this step. Or the reason, since they could have made e-tickets changeable while leaving everything else as it was. Some say it's the first step towards the closure of all manned counters. I think it's just idiocy and the fact that Trenitalia hates us all.

This new nonsense had to become mandatory on all sales channels from August 5. Fortunately Italian Tobacconists that sell regional trains e-tickets (mostly to old people) pointed out that "getting tickets online" and "having a data connection 24/7" are not the same. For now Tobacconists won and the new system has been postponed to September for them and travel agencies.

ps Regional trains have no reserved seats, but frankly I can't get why you see a connexion between seats and this new online check-in.

Heaven help us all. I'm glad I won't be in Italy for the rest of this year. That gives me lots of time to read posts on this forum so I'm prepared for the hoop-jumping.

Is there a reason why they can't just make train tickets valid for a whole day, like about every other country in Europe does?

Sorry, but which country lets you re-use the same ticket again and again all day long?

Not reuse. But “valid for a single trip on dd/mm/yy”. Is pretty much the norm.

It doesn’t even make sense.
It sounds like they are just making work for works sake.
“Jobs for the boys” is the old UK saying……..

Um … can you still buy paper tickets in the machines and validate them in the ticket-stamping machines? I ask this as someone who doesn’t own a smartphone 😟

Is pretty much the norm.

You don't get the point, that's the norm where there are conductors checking tickets on most - if not all - trains.

The public funds given to Trenitalia to run Regional trains are enough to check tickets on 1 Regional train out of 10. Sometimes even less- on some routes the service agreement with the relevant Region includes one day of ticket checks a month. You can't sell tickets "“valid for a single trip on dd/mm/yy”" in such a situation. The rate of free-riders would jump from 5 to 15% in a couple of weeks.

can you still buy paper tickets in the machines and validate them in the ticket-stamping machines?

Yes, you can. But you can't buy a regional train ticket online, print the QR code at home and get on without a smartphone. Now there is no "paper back-up": It's either a paper ticket or an e-ticket.

More, without the "4 hours" rule nobody knows what happens if you must transfer from a Regional train to a Regional train and you miss the second one because the first Regionale is late.

You don't get the point, that's the norm where there are conductors
checking tickets on most - if not all - trains.

Not having systematic ticket checking on regional trains is quickly becoming the norm everywhere as well. Regional trains in Switzerland do not have conductors. And I often do not have my ticket checked in France or Belgium as well. Yet, tickets are always sold valid for a whole day.

Bu why is that relevant? If I buy a ticket from A to B valid on 16 Aug. 2023 I cannot use it on any other day anyway, and I unlikely going to do the same trip twice in a day. (And anyway, you can do what Switzerland does: Return tickets on regional services are actually day tickets).

So I do not see how Trenitalia would incur a huge freeloader problem if they did the same thing as SBB, DB, NMBS, SNCF, NS, ÖBB, CD etc...

IMHO, this is an important enough topic to bump to the top of the pile...so I'm doing that.
In addition to Dario's insights, there are a couple of threads over on TA that might be useful for the dazed and confused.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g187768-i20-k14515222-Changes_in_Electronic_Regional_Trenitalia_tickets-Italy.html

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g187768-i20-k14495009-o10-Advance_purchase_of_Regional_Train_Tickets-Italy.html#118512567

My take on it? Long live paper regionale tickets!

What happens with tickets for regional trains bought outside of Italy?

You mean that you connected to the Trenitalia site/app while outside of Italy? Or that you used the site of a re-seller based outside Italy?

Suppose you bought a ticket Luzern - Pisa on www.sbb.ch and printed it out. What next?

Or you buy the tickets on www.trainline.com...

What next?

No idea. Ask SBB and trainline, or read again what's written in their e-mails and the attached PDF files. Tickets sold before August 5 will circulate up to December 9, so the the old and the new system will coexist for some months.

SBB is a reputable railway company with business agreements with all European railway companies, I bet they know what to do. Trainline is just a re-seller that sometimes sells train tickets that do not yet exist.

I doubt you are travelling via Regionale trains all the way from Luzern to Pisa. If you can't get a reply before arriving, print out the last leg's ticket and ask a Trenitalia conductor in Florence what to do.

Bookmarking this one to have the update replies available. I’ll be riding several Regionales next May.