Government planning its own Great British Railway’s train ticket sales website

Government planning its own Great British Railway’s train ticket sales website



by HeartyBeast

13 comments

  1. What problem do they think this is solving? For once, this problem has actually already been solved by the free market (trainline) but the government can’t help but launch another doomed IT project that will take years, cost billions, and barely work – if we’re lucky. 

  2. If it makes it cheaper then that’s great however.. Doesn’t have much point to it if the trains services aren’t improved, it’s no wonder people drive instead, there’s no situation where driving wouldn’t be the better choice and I say this as a fan of public transport

    Fuck the trains, grab the National Express, it’ll be much much cheaper and you won’t be cramped.

  3. Here is how you do it, Train tickets are £10

    Wherever you go, how many times you are on the train that day, £10

    Public transport should be a service, not a for proffit enterprise

  4. They have been talking about this for years…

    It’s the most perfect British thing, you have a very successfully publicly traded British company Trainline which does something well at no cost to taxpayer and pays tax, creates jobs, has led in tech innovation…

    The problems of fairs aren’t Trainlines fault but because of complex pricing set by Dft…

    Instead of simplifying pricing and letting these private companies deliver it you then decided to use Taxpayer money to create a gov body to do largely the same thing which has already sunk the share price of the British businesses that offer this and will likely do the same thing but somehow much worse because it’s being led by Dft and will be run by halfwit civil servants. 

    And then government will ask….”bUt WHy iSNt OUr eCoNOmy GrOwiNg”….

    It’s pretty remarkable.

  5. Something like the Swiss SBB [https://www.sbb.ch/en](https://www.sbb.ch/en) would be amazing. Simple, efficient, quick website – you can be done in literally 20 seconds!

    Log in (and it automatically picks up any rail cards etc. you have), pick your start location and your end location. It will get you the best ticket price for the route, download the QR code to your app, and you’re good to go – the best bit, it will do so even if it includes trains, busses, gondolas, boats along the way – all the transport is integrated – so you can literally just go from A to B and not need to worry about how to get there. Everything integrated (and they even make sure everything actually lines up too!).

    If you use the app, it’s even easier – you just press “Go” and when you get to where you want to go you press “Stop” and it uses your GPS and timings to work out the route you took and charge you appropriately. As it tracks you along your route, it even helps you as you go (e.g. in 5 minutes, you’ll arrive at Platform 5 at this station, walk down the steps, go along and walk up to get to Platform 3 in 6 minutes for your next train).

    I can dream…

  6. Dear God not another government IT system. Which MP’s crony is getting the contract this time?

  7. Ah, another expensive pointless duplication of effort so that politicians have something to point at.

    Good job we have plenty of money to waste.

  8. we need to sack the unelected think tanks that come up with this bullshit.

  9. I don’t really understand why we don’t just add the cost into our NI contribution. Then there’s no website, no tickets, revenue protection teams ect and would probably increase rail traveler numbers
    Would it be perfect? No. Would it be better than what we have now? Hard to see that it could be any worse

  10. This is such a trivially obvious thing that it would have happened about 10 years ago under any reasonable government. NRE and the toc websites are already about halfway there,  but both sides have been artificially held back by stupid politics. Trainline et al are fundamentally parasitic on the industry.

  11. Whatever it takes to stop Greater Angelia robbing me every week

  12. Oh great, a government IT project. This will definitely end well.

  13. It’ll be brilliant or an absolute shit show.

    It’ll potentially make buying tickets more straight forward and cheaper.

    Or, it’ll be a money pit built by a company owned by a mate of some senior in parliament (that also is a director on the sly).

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