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

  • Toll-based mobility solutions from Emovis
    March 4, 2022
    Emovis is pleased to be back at Intertraffic Amsterdam to showcase its latest toll-based mobility solutions. The Covid pandemic has accelerated the transition to cashless tolling and the drive towards digital charging methods.
  • UK council to upgrade speed cameras
    September 23, 2013
    Derbyshire County Council is to upgrade speed cameras across the county to accommodate digital technology, at a cost of US$1.6 million. The council’s seventy speed cameras currently use wet film technology. It is believed that only twelve of these actually have film in them and that they are changed on a rolling basis. The new digital network will see all seventy sites being brought into operation at once.
  • Europe’s satellite projects ‘late and over budget’
    February 3, 2016
    The French court of Auditors has found that the European satellite navigation programmes, Galileo and EGNOS (the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service), the European satellite navigation programmes, will cost the EU more than US$14 billion over the period 1994-2020, says Euractiv. The delayed projects were originally allocated a budget of US$5 billion, according to the auditors. Galileo will cost a total of US$11 billion. Half of this amount had already been spent by the end of 2013. The C
  • Increased automation is already improving road safety
    April 20, 2017
    Richard Cuerden considers how many of the technologies developed as part of a move toward autonomous vehicles are already being deployed as ADAS improve road safety. The drive to create autonomous vehicles has caused a re-evaluation of what is needed to safely navigate today’s roads and the development of systems that can replace the driver in many scenarios. However, many manufacturers are not waiting for ‘tomorrow’ and are already incorporating these systems in their new cars as Advanced Driver Assistanc