ScotRail trials pay-as-you-go ticketing system in Glasgow

Transport Scotland and ScotRail join Deutsche Bahn in the quest for hydrogen powered rail travel.

An account-based smart ticketing system has been deployed on Scotland’s Glasgow Cathcart loop, enabling passengers to use a pay-as-you-go ticketing system using a ScotRail smartcard.

The ticketing solution is Cubic’s, named One Account, and has been branded by Abellio ScotRail as ‘Smart Plus.’

The account-based approach has the potential to allow travellers to have a single funding account across multiple modes of public/private transportation for a seamless mobility payment experience. It reduces the cost of a journey with smarter, personalised and actionable end-to-end journey planning. The ScotRail trial is only enabling account-based ticketing for rail at the moment.

“We are delighted to be involved in this innovative trial,” said Claire Dickie, Head of Revenue Development, ScotRail. “Customers are changing the way they want to do business with us and we see account-based ticketing as one of the potential ways to improve the overall customer experience.”

ScotRail has promised to improve its operations by recruiting extra staff, expand its fleet to improve punctuality and reliability; and trial new technology to improve the passenger experience after receiving a remedial notice from Transport Scotland in 2018.

“Cubic is proud to work with Abellio ScotRail to deliver smart-ticketing solutions in Scotland,” said Laurent Eskenazi, Managing Director of EMEA, CTS. “One Account delivers an end-to-end multimodal platform that encompasses the aspirations of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) which can be extended to the UK’s entire public transport network.”