If you’ve spent any time trekking around London in recent years, you’ll know that contactless travel is a godsend. Found across pretty much all kinds of public transport, paying directly by card makes travel far, far less of a hassle. And, now, excitingly, contactless is branching out.
This week the government announced that over 50 rail stations across southeast England will be converted to Pay As You Go ticketing by the end of the year. So far, 53 have been confirmed.
The installation of more contactless machines will allow passengers to use a bank card (or contactless payments on their phone) at the start and end of their journey rather than buying a ticket in advance or at a ticket office. You can already find the system in place at more than 350 stations inside Greater London and at stations including Reading, Gatwick Airport and Luton Airport Parkway.
The switch-up won’t just make journeys simpler – it’ll make them cheaper, too. Commuters will be able to benefit from daily and weekly fare caps that aren’t applied if they buy tickets individually. The overall aim is to attract more travellers and commuters back to the railways.
All this stuff comes ahead of an announcement expected on Wednesday that up to 1,000 rail ticket offices could be closed in an attempt to modernise the network. However, transport minister Huw Merriman has said that the two moves are not directly linked.
Merriman told the Evening Standard: 'It’s technology [passengers] will be well-used to using on many of their other transactions. You could say it’s the railways catching up with the way many customers currently transact.
'But ultimately the aim is to get more people on to the railway because they can see it’s simple, it’s straightforward and they understand the pricing mechanism.'
Here is the full list of stations in southeast England set to go contactless:
Basildon
West Horndon
Sevenoaks
Bletchley
Benfleet
Westcliff
Shoreham (Kent)
Bricket Wood
Chalkwell
Beaconsfield
Ashford (Surrey)
Cheddington
East Tilbury
Denham
Datchet
Garston
Laindon
Denham Golf Club
Egham
Hemel Hempstead
Leigh-on-Sea
Gerrards Cross
Kempton Park
How Wood
Pitsea
High Wycombe
Shepperton
Kings Langley
Shoeburyness
Seer Green & Jordans
Staines
Leighton Buzzard
Southend Central
Bat & Ball
Sunbury
Park Street
Southend East
Dunton Green
Sunnymeads
St Albans Abbey
Stanford-le-Hope
Eynsford
Upper Halliford
Tring
Thorpe Bay
Otford
Virginia Water
Watford North
Tilbury Town
Windsor & Eton Riverside
Wraysbury
Apsley
Berkhamsted
Exciting stuff, eh? Now for the rest of the UK to follow suit!
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