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

  • Applied Information’s app gets Marietta connected
    October 26, 2017
    Must the benefits of connected vehicle technology wait for a generation of new or retrofitted vehicles? The US city of Marietta is about to find out. Can connected vehicle functionality be delivered via a smartphone? Well, in Marietta, Georgia, they are about to answer that question. The city is testing a smartphone app which warns motorists of nearby cyclists and pedestrians, approaching first responders, wrong-way driving, entering active school zones and much more.
  • Interoperability: towards the new frontier
    October 22, 2018
    After six years of intensive research, testing and negotiation, the US tolling industry is well on its way to groundbreaking results in the effort to establish regional - and eventually national - toll interoperability, says IBTTA’s Bill Cramer. Interoperability has been a high priority on the US tolling industry’s agenda for more than a decade. But several factors made it a uniquely complex issue to resolve - including the number of agencies involved, the significant investments those agencies had already
  • All change at ITS International
    February 9, 2018
    After four and a half interesting years, this will be my last issue as editor of ITS International. Over that time, I have had the privilege to meet and interview some of the ITS sector’s big names, attend most of the industry’s major events and, I hope, pass on some of that information to you, the readers. What has become clear is that the era of public austerity has created in many local and regional authorities, a fear of being accused of ‘wasting taxpayers’ money’. This is preventing them from visiting
  • Manchester trials Acusensus distracted driver technology
    September 4, 2024
    Heads Up tech will soon be deployed at several locations across the English region