THIS summer there was a flurry of activity to make booking and travelling by train simpler. Deutsche Bahn (DB), the German national railway, introduced a facility for travellers to store their train ticket in their mobile phone. This allows registered passengers to book and pay up to ten minutes before departure with their ticket validation arriving by text.
In the UK Midland Mainline (MML) and Virgin trialled a facility to allow passengers to print their tickets at home or in the office. In Paris the SNCF has been experimenting with what amounts to a low- cost train where tickets must be booked online.
While airlines have led the way with innovations like easy-to-use websites, detailed management information, flexible prices, e-tickets and online check-ins, the railways largely ignored new technology.
The rise of the internet and its self-booking facilities as well as an increasing use of trains has prompted this change of attitude. The reasons for this increase have been the improved speed and reliability of trains and possibly the superior green credentials of travelling by train rather than by air or car.
It has meant more pressure on travel management companies to book trains for clients and therefore stepped up the need for improved ways of booking. The Evolvi online booking system designed specifically for the corporate travel market by Harry Weeks Travel has simplified booking compared with the cumbersome Elgar system, now on its way out, which required special training for an agent to use. Evolvi is now widely used.
The print-your-ticket-at- home experiment by MML and Virgin is an advance on the installation of ticket printing machines in a few large offices over the past two years.
But it is the German advance which is the real pointer to the future. DB has enabled customers to book via their mobile phones since 2004. The traveller registers on the DB website then books and the ticket is sent by post.
The new system, introduced in August, ends the need for that. A text message is sent to the site which then sends the confirmation, in effect the ticket, back to the booker. That is all they need to show the train manager.
Karl-Friedrich Rausch, DB’s chairman of passenger services, said: “Our customers will find travelling by train easier and more convenient. We expect this innovation to be particularly popular with young people and business travellers.”
In the UK things are also moving that way. The Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) has asked two technology suppliers to develop and evaluate ideas for ticket-to-mobile technology for ticketing.
Atoc said the introduction of this type of technology would lead to considerable changes in ticket retailing on Britain’s railways.
George Muir, Atoc’s director general, said: “Technology can go a long way to remove the need for passengers to queue at ticket offices or to wait for tickets to arrive in the post.”
While the technology exists for smart cards for travel and printing tickets at home, a way for passengers to book at virtually the last minute and still receive their ticket validation in time to travel has proved a big hurdle.
If this is now on the way to being solved, and the German move suggests it is, travel by rail could become a far more attractive proposition.
