27.03.17
Almost 1.5 million eTickets sold six months after introduction
Newly released figures of eTicket sales have shown that over one million have been sold since the modern system was first implemented last year.
The eTicket scheme, which was first offered to customers by Virgin Trains West Coast in August 2016, in partnership with Trainline, allows passengers to use a ticket stored on their smartphone or mobile device through the train company app, in Apple Wallet and by email. Gatwick Express and TransPennine Express followed suit and Caledonian Sleeper will offer eTickets soon.
Currently, a number of different train companies are using different types of mobile-friendly tickets, including the m-Ticket that is used by Chiltern Railways, CrossCountry, Great Western Railway, Greater Anglia, Northern, London Midland, ScotRail, TransPennine Express and Virgin Trains East and West Coast.
The Rail Delivery Group (RDG) has now announced that 1.4 million eTickets have been sold since the start of the scheme, and that 85% of tickets sold online by Gatwick Express were now eTickets, whilst Virgin Trains West Coast reported that almost half of customers who were given the choice to use an eTicket opted for that rather than a paper one.
Today’s development will stand as a step in the right direction for eTickets, as the RDG aims to work with rail companies to enable customers on every part of the network to use smartphones as tickets by 2018.
Dennis Rocks, RDG managing director of Technology Services, said that the railway must “move with the times”, adding that eTickets presented many benefits to customers.
“All train companies are improving and modernising how they sell tickets, developing mobile-friendly, smarter types of electronic tickets to make it quicker and easier for people to pay to travel by train,” added Rocks.
“It’s great to see 1.4 million eTickets sold in just six months. More and more train travellers are discovering the benefits of being able to buy tickets online and download them to a smartphone or other device rather than having to rely on the old orange paper type.”
Gatwick Express services director, Angie Doll, also said that eTickets were an innovative concept for passengers on shorter journeys looking to travel as quickly as possible.
“With these online eTickets passengers really can glide to Gatwick. They feature a 10% discount and we’re selling 65,000 a month,” she said. “They’re brilliant for the very large number of people making simple journeys to and from the airport – a logical and positive innovation that moves us from the antiquated era of the orange paper ticket to the modern systems used by airlines across the world.”
Though the news shows that the concept is going down well with consumers, some concerns have been raised about eTickets. Writing for RTM, Justin Stenner, head of technology for Heathrow Express, said that work needed to be done to allow interoperability of tickets between different TOCs.
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