Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 1 November 2018 to Question 183470 on Railways and Aviation: Fares, what proportion of the UK rail network passengers are planned to be able to use (a) smart cards and (b) mobile phones for fares by the end of 2018.

The Government’s £80m investment in accelerating smart ticketing builds on previous and existing franchise commitments, and sits alongside Government funding for Transport for the North’s smart ticketing programme and the Rail Delivery Group’s investment in barcode technology.

Together, these programmes mean that the rail industry is on track to deliver a smart card or barcode option that passengers can choose to use for singles, returns and seasons on journeys across almost all of the rail network by the end of the year.