The Government’s extension of contactless pay-as-you-go rail travel beyond London could be completed four years late, it has emerged.
As part of the launch of Shadow Great British Railways, the Department for Transport (DfT) said that tap-in tap-out technology will be rolled out at a further 45 stations next year, backed by nearly £27m of government funding.
The upgrades will include London Stansted and follow 47 previously announced stations across the Southeast that are set to benefit from the technology in September, effectively putting passengers within Transport for London’s (TfL) pay-as-you-go network but not its fare zones.
As Transport Network has reported, this month’s rollout completes the first phase (53 stations) of a DfT contract with TfL.
That phase should have been completed at the end of the 2022-23 financial year but in July 2023 the DfT said it would be delivered by the end of that year.
The second phase – a further 180 stations – was due to be completed by the end of 2024.
The DfT told Transport Network that the 45 stations most recently announced represent the next phase of delivery but said details on when and where tap-in tap-out ticketing will be enabled will be announced ‘in due course’ – government code for the lack of a firm date.
However, the 45 stations represent exactly a quarter of the remaining 180, meaning that the current rate of the rollout would see it completed around the end of 2028 – four years late.
The delay to the current programme follows the fiasco of the previous government’s South East Flexible Ticketing (SEFT) programme, which was heavily criticised in a 2017 report by the National Audit Office.
Despite spending tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, the DfT has failed to deliver TfL-style multi-modal flexible ticketing to the Southeast or other regions.
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