Julie Grey, Chief Executive, Traveline and PlusBus

Using tech as the start of the bus and rail industry working together to do integration

Julie outlined how the journey planner Traveline is being integrated with PlusBus which includes bus travel when you buy your rail ticket. 

We have bus, train and light rail from all over the country integrated into our multimodal journey planner, and we use SilverRail as our journey planning engine, which is the same product as National Rail Enquires. That’s the core product, but we collate and export the bus data and are giving it away for free to organisations like Google and Moovit.

Our board is made up of bus operators, the Rail Delivery Group and  transport groups - and we are a not for profit. And because we are self-funding, we can move as fast as innovation cycles. If we are planning a new project, we’ve got experts from Go Ahead, Arriva, Transport Focus, Confederation of Passenger Transport and bus users, all around a table, all putting their brains into the same place to try and put passengers at the heart of this.

My other hat is PlusBus which offers the add on of unlimited bus travel when you buy your rail ticket. It is the start of the bus and rail industry working together to do integration. PlusBus is named in both the national bus and rail strategies.

PlusBus currently covers 280 schemes and at the moment you have to buy a paper ticket at the station, but we’re about to launch our e-ticket through Apple and Google. To be able to do that we have had to set up individual multi-operator ticketing schemes all over the country – accreditation is important.

We’re already part way to delivering it but there are significant tech challenges with the app and the tech on the bus. We’re working with people like Trainline, who we anticipate will be upselling this as one of their products.

We’ll soon offer PlusBus through our journey planner or if there isn’t a PlusBus scheme, we’ll be able to link in the multi-operator ticketing schemes such as the MCard ticket in West Yorkshire or the Manchester ticket – so we’re handing people on to the bus network.

By selling tickets this way, there are some instances where we’re introducing rail travellers to bus for the first time. We talk about people becoming adopters of transport; they will try it a few times and become familiar with a different way of travelling around… it’s something that’s already happening. At the moment it’s a rail product, but it could also be a brand.