Richard Rowson: Pioneering Online Ticket Sales and Transforming Transit Journey Planning

This month on Transit Voices, we are thrilled to host Richard Rowson, a trailblazer in online ticket sales, known for his pioneering work on the UK's Trainline website two decades ago. 

In this program, he tells host Ben Whitaker about the challenges in setting up the site because, as he puts it “until 2007 the industry in many ways wasn't ready for it.” Discover the blend of online transactions and fax communications that marked the early days of digital ticketing, facilitating passengers to have their tickets printed at specific stations

 “A lot of that first decade was the heavy engineering,” he explains, “How can you build a Journey Planner that takes all these feeds and within a few seconds can give you some journey results?”

The conversation about journey planning deepens as Richard talks about how even now, planners do not take into account the real world, “They'll either try and get you on the bus all the way from door to door, which will probably look slow and unappealing, or they'll give you a driving option where they assume that you'll be able to park on the pavement right outside the office that you're going to and completely ignore the issue that you'll end up parked in a multi-story a mile away from where you're going and still have a miles walk at the end of your journey,” he says.  Ben agrees, commenting “Some of the data feeds you're now consuming to find those buses and shuttles and everything else aren't fit for purpose yet, because nobody's really used them and you find out that they're wrong or out of date,” he says. “And that's hard, hard, hard work, and someone somewhere has to pay for it.” 

The discussion takes a fascinating turn toward monetizing journey planning and the allure of Mobility as a Service for some companies. While that’s a snippet to leave you hooked, this episode also unfolds discussions on contactless pay-as-you-go systems, fare policies, compensation, revenue management, and the gaps that exist in the current transit framework. Tune in to this engaging episode of Transit Voices to explore the evolution of online ticketing and the myriad dimensions of journey planning in the modern transit landscape.