England to trial GPS-based pay-as-you-go rail ticketing via app

A new digital pay as you go rail ticketing system that tracks passengers via GPS on their phones will be trialled in England from 1 September, starting on East Midlands Railway services between Leicester, Derby and Nottingham and expanding to Northern services in Yorkshire at the end of the month. The trials are intended to replace prebooked paper and mobile tickets by automatically recording journeys, calculating the cheapest fare and charging passengers at the end of the day.

Under the scheme, participants will check in and out through a mobile app that uses global positioning system technology to detect when they board and leave the rail network. For station barriers and on-board inspections the app will generate a barcode to be scanned. Officials said the system will aggregate multiple trips and, where appropriate, calculate whether a season ticket would have been cheaper, with the aim of ensuring passengers always receive the best daily fare.

The trials, funded with about 1 million pounds from the government as part of its Plan for Change, will be limited to a small number of users while operators test the technology. Department for Transport officials said up to 4,000...