Commercial Director ELENI JORDAN says the forthcoming rollout of pay as you go is the next milestone in the operator’s evolution of ticketing options
The way people buy rail tickets is changing. The habits of c2c passengers are a good demonstrator of this: 66% of the operator’s retailing is already through digital channels, and this figure is likely to grow this year as contactless pay as you go ticketing is rolled out across the entire c2c route.
The rollout is part of a £360 million Government investment in fares and ticketing, intended to cover more than 700 stations across the UK. Of that, £20 million has been allocated to extend contactless pay as you go ticketing to a further 53 stations in London and the South East served by five operators, 15 of them on c2c’s network. The technology being deployed is Transport for London’s established contactless payment system, and the rollout is phase one of what was dubbed Project‘Oval’, named after the shape drawn around the included stations and marking its intention to eventually offer contactless payment at all stations within a 30- to 40-mile radius of the capital. Asecond phase covering more stations is planned for 2025.
