Waiting line

I am at Penn Station, waiting for my train to board. I printed my ticket using the self-service kiosks, with only a little trouble. The kiosks work fine, except that they require you to insert a credit cars to initialize the process, even if you’ve already payed online. After inserting the card, you are given the option of buying tickets or printing prepurchased tickets. In my case, this wasn’t a problem, because even though I didn’t buy the tickets with my own card, as it doesn’t work at point-of-sale (it’s just an ATM card, not a debit), I could still use it to get to the menu to print my ticket. However, if one had bought a ticket using someone else’s card because one didn’t have a card at all, they would be rendered unable to use the kiosks. I suppose that is what the ticket windows are for. All the same, it seems like a rather obvious, and easily fixed design flaw. You should only need a card if you need to pay.