Pandemic may mean end of the line for paper railway tickets

PAPER train tickets may be ditched as passengers no longer want to “handle bits of paper”, a rail minister has said.

Chris Heaton-harris told peers he wanted to replace “old-fashioned” ticket machines with digital QR and barcodes ticketing on smartphones.

However, he said people would “always be able to pay with cash” in some form under the future system.

He made the comments before the Lords built environment select committee hearing on the Government’s coming rail shake-up. He said the pandemic had drastically sped up the train system’s move to a “pay as you go” tap in rail fare system. “People have strayed away from wanting anything paper or passing paper around,” he said.