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Press release 22nd january 2016

 

Britain's "invisible" new railway stations



Passengers trying to travel to Britain's newest railway station may have some difficulty buying tickets to get there.  That's because only about half of the websites selling tickets have the new station listed. Bermuda Park station opened on Monday 18th January, yet five days later, research by the campaign group Railfuture discovered that many websites had not been updated to list the new station.

"There is really no excuse for this, and it shows a lack of joined up thinking in Britain's rail industry" said Railfuture spokesman Bruce Williamson "This station has been in the pipeline for years, so it's not as if this is some late breaking emergency change. It doesn't inspire confidence in passengers and loses sales. It also calls into question the effects of fragmentation on passengers."

Another station which opened on the same day, Coventry Arena, was similarly absent from the websites.

Railfuture discovered that on Tuesday evening half of the web-sites it tried using (a mixture of National Rail, TOCs and independent sites) did not know the new stations. Things had not changed by Friday.

"Sadly this problem is nothing new.  We've been monitoring ticket machines to see how long it takes for new stations to appear. The Borders railway opened on 6th September but that we found that Great Northern ticket machine s only listed the new stations in December while neighbouring Greater Anglia (a sister company of ScotRail) still did not know them at the end of December."

"The train operating companies would be pretty quick to pounce on someone for not having the correct ticket but they are incapable of selling the tickets in the first place!"

Notes to editors:

Websites not listing the new stations as at 2 PM Friday 22nd January: Trainline, Virgin Trains, Northern Rail, raileasy, raileurope, BRfares.

Websites which do list the new stations are: National Rail Enquiries, London Midland, South West trains, first transPennine express, East Midlands trains, mytrainticket.co uk

Railfuture is the UK's leading independent organisation campaigning for better rail services for both passengers and freight.

Railfuture's website can be found at: www.railfuture.org.uk

Follow Railfuture on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Railfuture

For further information and comment please contact:

Bruce Williamson, media spokesman
Tel: 0117 927 2954 Mobile: 07759 557389
media at railfuture.org.uk