Many British city-dwellers have been paying for trains, trams and buses with a simple tap for years now, thanks to the magic of contactless payments. The tech has made travel quicker, cheaper and all-in-all more convenient. And the rest of the country is slowly catching up. Last year, the government announced that it would be rolling out contactless machines in railway stations across the south east of England.
Project Oval, as it’s known, is a £20 million joint project by the Department for Transport, Rail Delivery Group andTransport for London aiming to bring contactless to 230 stations in the southeast region. It will remove the need to queue up and buy a paper ticket or top up before you travel. It could also be cheaper thanks to daily fare caps. All you need to do is tap in and tap out.
A total of 47 stations are confirmed to be getting the machines, which will go live from September 22. It should be noted that it will only work for payments with bank cards (or your phone) and doesn’t include Oyster cards, as that tech is now too old.
And if you get ticket discounts with a railcard or concession rates, it’ll still be cheaper to stick with normal ticket, though there are plans to eventually incorporate those rates into contactless payments.
Here’s the full list of southeast England stations due to go contactless next month
- Basildon
- Benfleet
- Chalkwell
- East Tilbury
- Laindon
- Leigh-on-Sea
- Pitsea
- Shoeburyness
- Southend Central
- Southend East
- Stanford-le-Hope
- Thorpe Bay
- Tilbury Town
- West Horndon
- Westcliff
- Apsley
- Berkhamsted
- Bletchley
- Bricket Wood
- Cheddington
- Garston
- Hemel Hempstead
- How Wood
- King’s Langley
- Leighton Buzzard
- Park Street
- St. Albans Abbey
- Tring
- Watford North
- Bat & Ball
- Dunton Green
- Eynsford
- Otford
- Sevenoaks
- Shoreham
- Ashford
- Datchet
- Egham
- Kempton Park
- Shepperton
- Staines
- Sunbury
- Sunnymeads
- Upper Halliford
- Virginia Water
- Windsor & Eton Riverside
- Wraysbury
Transport in the UK
Transport around Great Britain is always being chopped and changed. So at Time Out, we like to keep you updated on all the latest developments. There’s this first look at Liverpool’s futuristic new ‘glider’ buses, a tunnel that has been proposed to connect the USA and the UK, and a massive £140 million makeover at this Victorian railway station. And, as always, all the info you need on the ongoing rail strikes.
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