Pay as you go smart card launched for use on railway in west-mid Cornwall
6 November 2023

GWR (Great Western Railway) has announced the launch of a tap on/tap off smart card for purchasing tickets on the railway, initially covering Penzance to Par (and the branch lines to Falmouth and St Ives). The service is scheduled to launch on 15 November. GWR says that the card can be used on any trains within this area, i.e. those run by GWR or by any other rail operator. It is planned to extend the scheme to the rest of Cornwall in the future, but no date has been set for that yet.

The GWR website provides full details of the scheme. It says that passengers using the smart card will be charged the best price for the journeys that they have made each day. This includes charging for an anytime or off peak day return rate for a passenger making a return journey on the same day as the outward journey. Passengers with discount railcards such as the Devon and Cornwall railcard or Senior Railcard can link these to the smart card to enable these discounts to be applied. You can download a complete listing of pay-as-you-go-fares.

It will be interesting to see how many passengers make use of this scheme and whether it all works as well as the promotional material says that it will. If you wish to tell me about your experience of using the system, please contact me.

Several years ago, Cornwall Council had an ambition to have a system whereby bus and train fares would be integrated into one payment system, under the One Public Transport brand. It looks like such a scheme is still a long way away. However, this GWR scheme does have merit in itself and let us hope that it is successful and encourages more use of public transport.

Update
22 November 2023
See update on this story describing how it works in practice.