Government announces joined up travel - for towns and cities

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Press release from Department for Transport

Better Connected: tap-and-go travel across trains, trams and buses announced in government's new transport strategy

Strategy sets the direction for a more joined-up transport network that works better for passengers, drivers and communities across England.

Tap-and-go travel across buses, trains, and trams will benefit more cities and towns across England after the government announced more local powers for contactless travel today (2 April 2026). 

Local leaders are being given the tools to replicate joined-up systems already in place in areas like Liverpool, London and Nottingham, where passengers travel seamlessly across the city on different transport while tapping their bank card as payment – without juggling multiple tickets or apps. 

Towns and cities??  - How about everywhere that multiple options exist?

[grahame]

In answer to the correspondent who alerted me to this press release, I wrote:

<soapbox>Co-incidentally, I was just in the process of (locally) writing up our summer Melksham timetables for this summer as your email landed, and chatting with Lisa as to how we simply tell people about the best way from our town into Bristol which is such a major regional destination.   Google came up with six options for an immediate departure, all different routes, over the next two hours … and then we got on to talking about how the information is combined and available, pos and cons, and the fares.

The journey from Melksham to Bristol is such that you can more or less walk up to any one of eight different routes as far as Bath.  Returning home, it’s a bit of a nightmare as the routes diverge from each other in Bath and you have to know / research which one there happens to be a service on next or indeed if it’s running outside core hours and how long the wait is for the next service.   The icing on that unholy cake is also being aware of fares and fare implications, and whether services are running to time or you are going to be dumped at [change place] with a wait of 2 hours plus …

Joining up better is so much overdue.  I was talking that through with a community friend the other day and it’s a given that in London this works already.

Tap-and-go travel across buses, trains, and trams will benefit more cities and towns across England after the government announced more local powers for contactless travel today (2 April 2026).

And I would hope more that just “cities and towns”.  How about all public transport irrespective of whether passengers are travelling through brown or green?
</soapbox>

Screen captured at 07:54 - ironically, that train "expected" at 08:07 got cancelled ... and it was clear if you looked at what was going on that was likely to happen!

[Bob_Blakey]

Hats off to our government for 'other measures include a new Google Maps partnership to track rural buses'.

Oh, wait...bustimes.org already does this perfectly well, and the urban and suburban services as well!

'Bit of a cock-up on the research front' as Uncle Jimmy might have said (younger readers could search 'Reginald Perrin' for more info).

[Noggin]

Hats off to our government for 'other measures include a new Google Maps partnership to track rural buses'.

Oh, wait...bustimes.org already does this perfectly well, and the urban and suburban services as well!

'Bit of a cock-up on the research front' as Uncle Jimmy might have said (younger readers could search 'Reginald Perrin' for more info).

Ah, but you see it wasn't a *Government* solution.

See also a whole slew of top-down initiatives to dictate everything from a central app for parking, booking railway tickets, to how your Smart TV^▸ (Thames Valley, or TeleVision, depending on context) should work (yes, really, there are some very well-paid people who think your Samsung TV is too complicated and that excludes you from society).