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Imobber - Venice Ticket Reader App

If you have an Android phone with an NFC chip, Andrea Fontana's free app will let you see how many rides are left (or how much time remains) on your ACTV vaporetto and bus tickets.

BELOW: These Imobber screen captures show the fares stored on various ACTV tickets.

imobber screen capture 1

imobber screen capture 2

ABOVE: These Imobber screen captures show the fares stored on various ACTV tickets.

By Durant Imboden

Venice vaporetto ticket Like many transit systems, ACTV--Venice's boat and bus network--has switched from traditional paper tickets to stored-value cards that can hold fares for multiple trips. And while this is convenient in some ways, it does make it harder to keep track of how many rides you have left and when the fare for your current ride expires.

White ACTV ticket reader One way to check the status of your ticket is to use the card reader at any ACTV boat stop. (Just be careful to press the "?" key if you're using the standard white-and-grey reader, or you may waste a fare.)

The green ticket readers at larger ACTV stops are safer to use, since they don't validate tickets--they merely show the stored fares.

If you have an Android smartphone with an NFC chip, you now have an even more convenient option: Imobber, an Android app by Andrea Fontana. With the free app, you can just hold the ticket near your phone, and the app will display everything you need to know about the fares on your ticket by type, such as:

Number of trips remaining on ticket
Available refills on ticket
Last validation (standard vaporetto tickets are valid for 75 minutes, so if you know that your ticket was validated at 10 a.m., you'll know that it's good until 11:15 a.m.)

You can also use the app to check how much time is left on your ACTV one-to-seven day travel ticket.

Note: Imobber is especially useful with land buses (which you might ride between Mestre and Venice's Piazzale Roma, or on the Lido di Venezia). Andrea Fontana explains:

"If you have a bus ticket or two or three, you can test them only when you're inside the bus. There's no machine at the bus stop to check them. And if you're inside the bus, it could be too late to discover that your ticket is empty! Some people attach Post-It notes to their tickets to remember the fare types and how many rides are left."

Where to get the app:

To install the free Imobber app, go to the Imobber - Venice Ticket Reader page at the Google Play store.

About the author:

Durant Imboden photo. Durant Imboden has written about Venice, Italy since 1996. He covered Venice and European travel at About.com for 4-1/2 years before launching Europe for Visitors (including Venice for Visitors) with Cheryl Imboden in 2001.

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