A pay-as-you-go train ticketing system which will track passengers’ journeys via GPS and charge them at the end of the day is to be trialled across England.
Instead of buying tickets at the station or on their phone, passengers will scan a bar code on an app when passing through ticket gates. Their journeys will be tracked using the location on their phone through GPS (global positioning system).
The location-tracking digital ticketing system hopes to replace the need for tickets, modernising rail travel and saving passengers money and time while travelling.
Rail minister Lord Peter Hendy said: “The railway ticketing system is far too complicated and long overdue an upgrade to bring it into the 21st century.
“Through these trials we’re doing just that, and making buying tickets more convenient, more accessible and more flexible.
“By putting passenger experience at the heart of our decision-making we’re modernising fares and ticketing and making it simpler and easier for people to choose rail.”
The trial will begin on September 1 on East Midlands Railway between Leicester, Derby and Nottingham and will expand to Yorkshire at the end of September on Northern Rail services between Harrogate, Leeds, Sheffield, Doncaster and Barnsley.
Up to 4,000 participants will be able to join the trials by signing up on train operators’ websites. More than 500 people have already registered interest in the scheme, according to Oli Cox, the head of commercial strategy and business planning at East Midlands Railway.
In February, Lord Hendy said: “We’ve seen the success that contactless ticketing has on making journeys easier to navigate and attracting more people to our railways.
“It’s only right that we now look to expand contactless ticketing to other major cities across the North, ensuring they can reap the economic benefits that simpler ticketing offers and that passengers are having a better experience.”
Similar systems have already been trialled in countries including Switzerland, Denmark and Scotland.
In January, ScotRail began trialling its ‘Tap & Pay’ system in the Strathclyde area and on routes between Strathclyde and Edinburgh. Similarly, an app gives you a barcode to pass through the ticket gates and calculates the cheapest fare for your journey once you have reached your destination.
