Submitted by Mike Grenville on Fri, 02 Feb 2007 14:10

Chiltern Railways has become the first train company in the UK to sell mobile phone tickets to their passengers.

A three month pilot has been launched in January where passengers can purchase Chiltern’s £5 online Eday ticket for journeys between London Marylebone and Birmingham Moor Street or Stratford –upon-Avon via the website www.chilternrailways.co.uk. The Eday ticket is available only on certain off peak trains.

During the pilot phase from January-April 2007, 'txt2mobile' will be offered as a fulfilment option for Chiltern's established E-Day ticket, in addition to 'print@home'.

Passengers receive their ticket in the form of a barcode sent directly to their mobile phone by an SMS. Staff on board the train and at London Marylebone station will be able to check the ‘mobile ticket’ with special barcode scanners. If the phone cannot display the barcode, the journey details will still be visible in normal text format.

Commercial Director for Chiltern Railways, Neil Micklethwaite said: “We are happy to be leading the industry as the first train company in the United Kingdom to sell this new format of mobile phone ticketing to our passengers. We have listened to our passengers and what they want is a simpler and easier way to purchase tickets for their travel. "

“The next step is to install new scanning gate technology at Marylebone station which will allow passengers with mobile phone tickets to scan their own ‘mobile tickets’ as they walk through the ticket gates,” Mr Micklethwaite said. Cubic Transportation Systems is supplying Chiltern Railways with the new gate technology, due for installation next month.

Yorkshire-based business YourRail are supplying the integrated solution. Director for YourRail Martin Hathaway said: “Virtually all rail passengers carry mobile phones and growth in both mobile communication and rail transport remains strong. People who are on the move turn to their mobile phones to manage their lives and we believe organising their transport this way will be a popular.

ts.com is the internet retailing company that has made the online Eday ticket compatible with mobile phone ticketing.

Mobiqa is the supplier of the mobile ticketing technology that generates and delivers barcodes to customer’s phones. They also supply the validation application that ticket inspectors use to determine if a ticket is valid for a particular journey.

Mobile phone ticketing is now available for Chiltern passengers for the next three months with the objective of making this service permanent. Ticket purchases on the move from mobile phones will be possible at a later stage, as well as via the internet and other retail channels.