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

  • Covid-19 and transportation: Maintaining critical operations in times of crisis
    September 12, 2020

     

    What were the major impacts of Covid-19 on transportation?

    At the peak of the shutdowns, passenger use of airports and mass transit was down 90 per cent. Use of roads by private vehicles was 60 per cent lower and use of commercial vehicles was down 10 per cent. Public transit was down 76 per cent and had to keep operating to get essential workers to their places of employment.

  • Cost Benefit: Don’t waste your energy
    October 28, 2021
    There are ways that we can harvest power from the world’s roads – without necessarily building new infrastructure. David Crawford investigates some of these new approaches
  • Study highlights regressive effects of road pricing and tolling
    April 9, 2014
    Road pricing can have a detrimental effect on the mobility and employment levels of low income households. Colin Sowman talks to Floridea Di Ciommo to discover why. Since the road pricing and tolling were first introduced it has been acknowledged that such schemes could have a disproportional impact on low income households but a study in Madrid, Spain, has revealed just how regressive such measures can be. The findings revealed that the consequences of a proposed road pricing scheme would be a 17% increas
  • Marc Williams, Texas DoT: 'We need to end this streak of daily death'
    April 26, 2023
    Texas DoT’s road safety campaign #EndTheStreakTX is part of a plan to reduce traffic deaths to zero in the Lone Star State by 2050. The agency’s executive director Marc Williams explains why it’s needed…