Smoother rail travel is on tap - if price is right

NEW-TECH TICKET SYSTEM GOES ON TRIAL ACROSS THE REGION

- By DAVID HUMPHREYS

THE roll-out of Merseyrail’s £500m fleet of new trains was met with much fanfare two years ago, with hopes it would herald a new era for our region’s transport network.

The installation of the new stock was meant to be a big step towards the desire to deliver a London-style integrated transport system.

New trains would surely be fol-lowed by a simple tap and go system making the ache of queuing up for a ticket at a station a thing of the past.

While the launch of this process has taken longer than hoped to get underway, a pilot test of the new technology began last week, with 50 lucky people across the Liverpool City Region chosen as the first to get the chance to test a system that has long been in place in the capital and major cities around the world.

As luck would have it, I was one of the few selected.

I must stress this was completely at random, I applied like any other punter would have done, popped my details down and received an email from the combined authority confirming I was on board.

My commute from the north end of the city into Moorfields proved to be the perfect setting for this test, meaning I could use my Metro card every day on my way to work.

The system uses the smartcard to effectively track your journeys across the Merseyrail network across a 24-hour period.

On my way into work, rather than join the queues, I would walk down the platform and place my card - available for £1 at any station - on the yellow platform validator.