Date: 09 Jan 2007 16:14
Award-winning Chiltern Railways is the first train company in the United Kingdom to sell the complete range of Transport for London smartcard products at their main London Marylebone station.Passengers can now purchase all products including Pay As You go Oyster for the London Underground and has sold their first annual Oyster card on Fastis, new booking office ticket machines.
Commercial Director Neil Micklethwaite said: “We have worked very closely with Transport for London, ATOC and our ticket machine suppliers, Cubic Transportation Systems to bring this facility to London Marylebone station.
“Previously passengers could wait up to 15 minutes to purchase an annual season ticket from booking offices but through making our new machines Oyster compatible we have increased this service dramatically.
“It has cost us an additional £120,000 to make our Fastis machines at London Marylebone compatible with Oyster and we can even sell Pay As You Go to London Underground passengers.
“Fastis machines, located in all of our booking offices, speeds up face-to-face ticket sales by 50%.
Chiltern Railways has recently upgraded their booking office ticket machines to Fastis with an £800,000 investment, and were the first to to sell an annual season ticket.
“We are also happy to announce that we are working very hard with Transport for London on being the first train company to sell Oyster Smartcards outside London. We will be launching this to our passengers in 2007,” he said.
Brian Cooke, Chairman of London TravelWatch said “We are delighted that passengers at Marylebone station will be able to purchase and recharge their Oyster cards there. We hope other train operators will soon follow the excellent lead set by Chiltern Railways.”
