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RAIL BOOKING


THE GOVERNMENT COMMITMENT TO SMART


TICKETING IS WELCOME BUT DEADLINES SEEM TO COME AND GO WITH ONLY LIMITED PROGRESS


smart ticketing, but within this detail is a requirement that any structural changes should be revenue neutral, which seems counterintuitive if the result of simplification is greater efficiency.” “Revenue neutral” could mean some


travellers paying more to support any headline grabbing proposals to cut certain fares. Could the victim be the business traveller who needs flexibility and peak hour travel, by any chance? “Our hope would be that Williams


puts rail users first, including business travellers who contribute significantly to rail revenues, so that the benefits of a modern ticketing system are shared through cost reductions where possible,” Cantrell adds. Meanwhile, the GTMC Next Generation


THE BUYER


What would be on a buyer’s wish list of changes to rail fares and season tickets?


ANONYMOUS BUYER, international consultancy 1. Bulk buying: Bulk buying is needed due to the price of rail tickets and the lack of discounted tickets on routes, such as Birmingham to London, and Manchester to London. We have offices in Bir- mingham, London and Manchester so travel between


them is frequent and there is no way of buying in bulk. 2. “Use by” date: Meetings get moved at the last minute – it’s the nature of the beast! It would be great if tickets had a “use by” date rather than us getting a refund and having to purchase again – that’s a waste of time and effort for both travellers and train companies. 3. Corporate season tickets: A corporate season ticket on a defined route would be useful, so you can obtain a better price and it can be used by everyone. I buy a monthly season ticket (over £1,000) for one direc- tor, which cuts the daily travel price by more than half to £188 per journey. It needs only two journeys a week to make it cost effective, so on the other three days it could be passed to someone else.”


130 MAY/JUNE 2019


report on younger business travellers found that 84 per cent want mobile ticketing. But few train operators currently offer e-ticketing (a ticket delivered to a mobile’s wallet that doesn’t have to be activated first) on all fares and routes, although a larger number offer m-ticketing (a barcode that can be printed out for scanning or displayed on a mobile). David Higgins, director of Trainline for Business, says: “Increased use of mobile tickets greatly improves the experience of travelling by rail. It creates a frictionless experience for the business traveller and benefits businesses in general by reducing time spent at the station and helping to reduce the collective carbon footprint. “The introduction of an accredited system and standardised approach to Delay Repay, fully approved by train operators, would allow our corporate partners to benefit from this scheme in the same way as leisure travellers, with the potential to save considerably on their overall travel spend.” Evolvi’s Cantrell adds: “The government commitment to smart ticketing is welcome but deadlines seem to come and go with only limited progress. The real issue is around interoperability and while we are seeing the rapid roll-out of barcoded tickets across all operators and routes, the vision for network- wide paperless travel seems some way off.” Intermediaries such as Evolvi and


Trainline will also be able to work with mobile pay-as-you-go schemes coming in for local travel, as with an organisation called ITSO which has successfully launched its first scheme with the tram system of West Midlands Metro.


buyingbusinesstravel.com


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