East Midlands Railway to offer country’s first ‘Smart Kiosk’ ticket machines
- First of a kind machines to support barcode and Smart Card ticket options
- More intuitive and user friendly making it easier to find the cheapest fares
- Includes real time travel information for passengers
East Midlands Railway is introducing the country's first 'Smart Kiosk' ticket machines - making it simpler and easier to buy the cheapest fares with the newest technology.
EMR’s new Smart Kiosks will issue both advance and walk up tickets as a printed bar code instead of the old-fashioned orange paper tickets. Passengers who book in advance, can also collect their pre-purchased Smart Card tickets onto their Smart Card for journeys in the future.
Later this year, the Smart Kiosks will be able to instantly retail Smart Card tickets when passengers buy their tickets from the machine.
Unlike older ticket vending machines, Smart Kiosks can be constantly updated and offer the full range of tickets for travel. The software has also been completely redesigned to make it much easier to find the best and cheapest fares available, regardless of whether you want to travel immediately or in the future.
Lucy Dean, Head of Commercial Strategy and Transformation at EMR said: “This is such an exciting time for East Midlands Railway.
“Smart Kiosks will support the industry's ambition for increasing Smart ticket take up and reducing ticketless travel by offering more opportunities to purchase tickets and doing so in a Smart way. To be the first TOC to do so is a great achievement.
“With the Smart Kiosks being much more user friendly, we hope our passengers on our regional routes will see the benefits of them as they are installed across our network throughout 2021”.
The first Smart Kiosks have been installed at Derby and Uttoxeter stations. An additional 28 machines will be installed late August / early September this year.
EMR has worked with both SilverRail and Cammax, leading suppliers in new generation Smart Kiosks across different sectors. Together they have developed a new Smart Kiosk that can offer the same flexibility and pricing to passengers that they have come to expect from online ticket purchases.
The Smart Kiosk uses the same Ticket Issuing System (SilverCore) and UK Journey Planner that SilverRail uses for supporting customers through web and App rail retailing stores. With the ability to buy tickets up to 90 days out and take advantage of on-the-day advanced ticket pricing, passengers will now have more access to cheaper fares.
EMR will also be continuing to work with Cammax and SilverRail to improve these machines in the future. The Kiosks currently print barcoded eTickets instead of the traditional orange paper tickets with a magnetic stripe on the back.
David Pitt, Head of UK Rail at SilverRail said: “We are as delighted as our colleagues at East Midlands Railway, to see the Cammax / SilverRail Smart Kiosk finally launch.
“We are all extremely pleased to provide passengers with access to a full range of eTickets that will allow everyone to access the same fare offers that you can otherwise access online.
“We already have ideas on how we can improve on this and bring even more innovative services to the kiosk.”
Julian Rooney, Managing Director at Cammax said: “It has long been our ambition to help the rail industry deliver innovative and flexible retailing.”
“We have been supplying Smart Ticketing Machines to the Transportation Market for many years and are delighted to have launched our first Smart Rail TVMs in partnership with SilverRail.”
“We are very much looking forward to exploring and delivering additional functionality and services that will help EMR improve their customer offering further.”
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