Skip to main content

UK railways to benefit from information upgrade

More than US$13.44 million funding will be spent by train companies to boost passenger information at stations across the UK. The funding will pay for a national roll-out to link customer information screens at stations to the latest live real time train information data, fed from a database developed and maintained by train companies. The upgrade will be rolled out in around 2,000 National Rail stations. The first stations will be switched on in summer 2014 and the whole project is anticipated to be comp
January 3, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
More than US$13.44 million funding will be spent by train companies to boost passenger information at stations across the UK.

The funding will pay for a national roll-out to link customer information screens at stations to the latest live real time train information data, fed from a database developed and maintained by train companies.  The upgrade will be rolled out in around 2,000 National Rail stations.  The first stations will be switched on in summer 2014 and the whole project is anticipated to be complete in 2015.

The scheme follows successful trials at seventeen stations managed by Virgin Trains along the West Coast Main Line and across all the stations operated by Chiltern Railways. The funding is provided through the National Stations Improvement Programme (NSIP) and the data will feed through from National Rail Enquiries (NRE).

Alec McTavish, NSIP lead for the Association of Train Operating Companies (1998 ATOC) said: “This funding is good news for passengers as it means every National Rail station with a customer information screen will be using the most up-to date ‘live’ train running information.

“With train travel more popular now than it has been for 90 years and over 1.4 billion trips made last year, operators know that passengers want the most up to-date information about their journey.

“Significant amounts of time and money have been invested in providing better, more consistent information for passengers. But we know that we can always improve, which is why operators are working with the rest of the industry and listening to passengers to find ways to keep on improving things even further.”

Train companies are working hard to continuously improve the information they give to passengers. Earlier this year NRE launched its own free smartphone app for iPhone and Android operating systems, offering UK passengers even more choice over how they access real time information about train journeys.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • ARTBA president: what happened to the hoverboards?
    October 28, 2019
    What keeps Dave Bauer up at night? David Arminas caught up with the head of ARTBA at his Washington, DC office during daylight hours Dave Bauer doesn’t really have many sleepless nights. He might sleep, though, with one eye open, just in case. “We have become a much more divided country politically,” says Bauer, president of ARTBA – American Road and Transportation Builders Association. “Whether you are thinking about federal government, or state or local government, there’s a hostility now in our politi
  • B&C Transit modernises Miami-Dade Metrorail’s control systems
    June 1, 2016
    Jason Gomez and Daniel Mondesir describe how passenger disruption was minimised during a major upgrading of the control room of Miami-Dade’s Metrorail. In 1984 when the Miami-Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works’ (DTPW) Metrorail system was launched in southern Florida, trains ran 18km along a single line and stopped at 10 stations.
  • Hard shoulder running aids uniform traffic flow and safer driving
    January 23, 2012
    David Crawford detects a market for European experience. Well-established now in at least three European countries, Hard Shoulder Running (HSR) on motorways is exciting growing interest in the US. A November 2010 Report to Congress by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), on the Efficient Use of Highway Capacity, notes the role of HSR in the European-style Active Traffic Management (ATM) strategies now being recommended for implementation in the US where, until recently, they were virtually unknown.
  • Time for a rethink on road user charging
    February 1, 2012
    There is no value in further US VMT charging trials, except to delay the inevitable. These trials should end after completion of the University of Iowa's National Evaluation of a Mileage-based Road User Charge. There is far greater promise in unleashing private operators to commence profitable, non-tolling services, then using these for toll assessment and collection as fuel distributors are currently used to collect fuel taxation. Bern Grush writes