Light at the end of the tunnel?

PASSENGERS will soon be able to pay for tickets using new contactless bank cards, ScotRail bosses have revealed.

ScotRail wants 60% of transactions done by smart card technology, similar to the London Underground Oyster card, by 2019.

Phil Verster said the next stage after that will be allowing people to swipe bank or credit cards with contactless technology.

He explained: “The first stage of getting smart cards going is to replace the tickets with a card, the second phase is to make it an account-based set-up where people say put £50 on their card and when they go through a gate it automatically subtracts the fare.

“The third phase is not to have the separate smart card at all, and you just use your contactless bank or credit card. immediately we have a couple of months now of hard work to c o v er t he train service performance,

“We obviously can’t influence winter but we have good winter and autumn preparations, making sure we are doing everything possible to make the railway ready.

“But it will be a couple of rough months, tough months, to work through our improvement plan in place.”

A series of severe storms wiped

Phil Verster wants improvements.

“So it is a bit of a journey, but it’s an exciting one.”

Currently more than two thirds of Scotland’s unstaffed railway stations do not have ticket machines.

ScotRail has launched a “Buy before you board” campaign, claiming around 900,000 fare dodgers avoid paying for their tickets every year.

But new figures obtained by The Sunday

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