Technology in place to expedite ticket reforms

Introducing ticket reforms through improved technology could take as little as two months, according to Go-Ahead Group Chief

Strategy and Customer Officer Katy Taylor.

“We could launch live to customers fairly soon,” she told the Commons Transport Select Committee on November 18.

“It is for the Department for Transport to agree to the types of tickets and approve the expenditure to do that. As soon as we get the go-ahead, we are keen to move forward with it.”

Abellio Group Managing Director Dominic Booth told

MPs: “The need to modernise and transform fares is more crucial than ever. None of us can absolutely forecast the future or just how much a return to officebased working there might be.

“It is going to call for a test and learn-type approach. As we see new behaviours emerging and start to understand them, we need the agility to test and try new products to see where the take-up is. We may need to move to dynamic pricing, such that on your first journeys you pay a certain price, but as you travel more often you start to get a discount on price.”

First Rail MD Steve Montgomery said: “We have to make sure that we embrace digitalisation. We sometimes get caught up as an industry with trying to deal with 100% of everybody - that there has to be a solution for all.

“We need to make sure that we pick up the maximum number of customers under digitalisation, with special measures for the small number who do not have that access.”

Taylor added: “Far fewer people use paper tickets - up to 70% of people use digital. We have a lot of technology out there already.”

Rail Minister Chris Heaton-Harris told the TSC there was no fixed date as to when fares would be fully reformed in the UK.