Rail ticketing revolution: thetrainline.com launches mainstream e-ticketing

thetrainline.com has become the first independent rail ticket retailer to give consumers the ability to print their own train tickets for journeys across the national rail network.

The launch of its e-ticketing product, aptly named Print Your Own, signals one of the biggest revolutions in ticket fulfilment since it helped to establish ‘ticket-on-departure’ almost a decade ago.

Since 2006 the leading independent online retailer of train tickets has been working with train operating companies to address the unique ticketing environment of the national rail network and develop an electronic solution to overcome these challenges. In that time it has trialled its e-ticketing technology on limited routes retailing direct on TOC websites and has successfully fulfilled over 400,000 tickets with this method. Now, four years on, e-ticketing is no longer a series of niche trials on obscure off-peak products, but is a fully-fledged fulfilment option and as its rollout continues the online retailer is confident it will become the predominant fulfilment method for advance purchase tickets.

Richard Rowson, product development director at thetrainline.com, said the initial challenge was producing the ticket itself: “Very early on in the project it became clear that the plethora of ticket designs for all the different rail operators would not only confuse consumers but hold back the rollout too. So the first milestone was getting industry standards agreed both for the visual ticket layout and for how to securely encode the ticket data within a two-dimensional barcode.”

thetrainline.com’s Print Your Own ticket displays a secure barcode that can be checked autonomously or against a central manifest, as well as a design that enables adequate visual security checks in areas without barcode readers.

Rowson continues: “Unlike airlines, which have been seen to pioneer e-ticketing, the national rail network does not have the luxury of defined single boarding points and indeed tickets may need to be inspected in a variety of locations – often multiple times within a single trip. As such, thetrainline.com is working with suppliers of on-train and gateline equipment to ensure Print Your Own tickets can be read and validated.”

The first TOC thetrainline.com is launching Print Your Own on is CrossCountry trains, with the new fulfilment option available on advance purchase tickets for all CrossCountry routes. Other TOCs will be added to the rollout during the course of 2010.

As part of its continued innovation in the rail ticketing arena thetrainline.com continues to invest in new ticketing technology that will provide an even easier and more convenient method for customers to collect their travel tickets.

Rowson continues: “As part of our continued innovation in rail ticketing thetrainline.com continues to invest in new ticketing technology that will provide an even easier and more convenient collection method for customers. The technology and business processes we’ve put in place for Print Your Own adapt extremely well to mobile phone retailing so we plan to roll mobile retailing out during the course of 2010 too.”