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.

Related Content

  • June 17, 2016
    Sampo Hietanen’s mobility mission
    For a decade Sampo Hietanen harboured a vision of an alternative form of mobility, now as CEO of MaaS Finland he is putting theory into practice. Sampo Hietanen has become the embodiment of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) – a concept he created 10 years ago while working for Finnish civil engineering giant Destia. “I had been working with the mobile sector on traffic information and started thinking what will happen when this becomes bigger,” he says.
  • November 10, 2015
    Smart parking trial begins in Canberra
    The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Government is to carry out a smart parking trial in part of Manuka starting in the first quarter of 2016. UK company Smart Parking will deliver the project using its SmartPark solution and construction is to begin in early November. A successful review of the pilot could then see further sensors installed across the rest of the city. The initial year long contract will see Smart Parking deploy 460 in-ground sensors which use infrared technology to detect when a park
  • June 30, 2017
    Government publishes programme of upgrades to major roads and motorways
    The UK government has unveiled a US$8 billion (£6.1 billion) programme of road improvements as part of its US$30 billion (£23 billion) upgrade to the road network in England.
  • February 18, 2013
    Moovit crowd-sourced public transport app launched in UK
    The Moovit crowd-sourced app for public transport information is now available in beta in the UK, including complete coverage across England, Scotland, and Wales. Already operating in the US, Canada, and Western Europe, Moovit is said to be the first public transport application to harness the power of the crowd, using real-time user-generated information to improve public transport trip planning and navigation. In addition to schedules, trip planning, and step-by-step navigation, Moovit collects and shares