UK: Great Western Railway is to launch its Touch pay-as-you-go smart card for the Bristol area at the beginning of September.
The Touch cards will be valid on GWR, CrossCountry and Transport for Wales services within the designated area, which radiates from Bristol to Ashchurch for Tewkesbury, Patchway, Severn Beach, Chippenham, Freshford and Weston-super-Mare.
Passengers will touch-in and touch-out at yellow smart card readers on the ticket gates or platform validators. At the end of the day they will be charged the best walk-up fare based on standard class Anytime, Off-Peak, Super-Off-Peak Day Single and Day Return fares. There will be weekly price capping applied to end-to-end journeys between two stations over a Monday to Sunday seven-day period.
In the event of a delay the train operator will let the user know if they are eligible for compensation.
Season tickets can also be stored on the smart cards, although Flexi Season tickets should be stored on a separate card.
The system is based on Tracsis Group company iBlocks’ SmartTIS technology, which is already used by Govia Thameslink Railway and South Western Railway. This is token agnostic, providing operators with a migration path to barcode or EMV bank cards without changes to the back office.
Metro Mayor for the West of England Dan Norris said the smart card launch would be a first step for smart ticketing in the area, and he looks forward to ’working with GWR on further future improvements to make it easier to top up, to integrate with other types of public transport and one day to be able to use debit cards to tap-in’.
