Station scanners will read iPhone ‘tickets’

Chiltern customers will be able to touch in and out of stations using barcodes on their mobiles

A mobile phone ticketing system, which will give passengers details of the cheapest prices and train times and then deliver the ticket as a 2D barcode, has been launched by Chiltern Railways.

Scanners on gates at stations will read the iPhone screen to enable passengers to touch in and out of stations. The iPhone app will include details of delays and disruption.

The app will remember favourite journeys and debit card details, so that travel can be made with “just a few touches of the screen”, says a Chiltern spokesman.

“Unlike most commercial booking services, the Chiltern Railways iPhone application will not charge a booking fee, and the application will be free to download.

The iPhone app will launched  in the spring, and will be extended to apps for BlackBerry, Android, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson later this year.

The app has been developed with partners ATOS Origin and Masabi.

A Chiltern spokeswoman says: “We chose to work with ATOS Origin and Masabi as they are long standing suppliers and partners to Chiltern Railways whom we feel have the best capability to technically integrate our ticketing systems both online and at gates on stations.  Their passion for barcode innovation and development perfectly matches ours.”

Graham Bodman, head of transport products for Atos Origin, says: “The i-app solution is connected to our AVANTIX WebTIS retail engine, which Chiltern already use to sell tickets online, and also to our AVANTIX Mobile solution, which verifies the mobile barcode. This latest innovation from Chiltern offers customers a quicker and more convenient way to buy and collect tickets directly via their mobile device with no additional transaction fees.”

Ben Whitaker, Masabi’s chief executive, says: “The era of queuing at train stations to buy tickets is coming to an end. Mobile handsets can provide an enormously convenient and user-friendly means of searching for train times and then buying and displaying tickets. While this is coming first to the iPhone, we’ve designed it so the application can be rolled out on almost all phones in the near future.”