Knowledge Hub / How can SilverRail Save Passengers Money?

How can SilverRail Save Passengers Money?

27/02/2024

Written by Sarah McDonald

SilverRail's mission is to make rail easy to plan, book and travel. One of the ways we do this is by building journey planning algorithms and products that help travellers find best value fares easily. Whilst we can't change the actual price of train travel, we can help travellers see the cheapest possible trains more easily through better digital experiences.

Here are three ways that SilverRail can help travellers save money:

1. Calendar Price Search

Calendar price search helps travellers find the cheapest rail fares. By displaying ticket prices in monthly, weekly, or hourly views, this feature enables travellers to easily see the cheapest time to travel over a long time period. Powered by caching technology which accurately stores and instantly recalls millions of rail fare and ticket availability data points, SilverRail was the first to bring calendar price search to the rail industry.

See calendar search at work on LNER.co.uk

2. Split Ticketing

At SilverRail, innovation takes centre stage, exemplified by our Brisbane office pioneering Split Ticketing for National Rail in 2012. Split Ticketing saves clients money on certain routes by splitting a train journey into multiple cheaper tickets by breaking down a journey into multiple segments and purchasing a separate ticket for each segment instead of a single ticket for the entire journey. This method can result in significant cost savings for travellers, as different segments of a journey may be priced differently. Our cache contains 14.8 million O/D pairs, with 98% accuracy, enabling superfast results!

Split Ticketing also improves the traveller experience by:

  • Allowing travellers keep the same seat on their journey where possible
  • Working with all travel classes and fares, including Railcards​
  • Providing multiple ticket delivery options – eTickets and Tickets on Departure​

See Split Ticketing at work at Virgin Trains Ticketing

3. Making Overtaken Trains visible

Journey planners typically only show the fastest route and alternative slower routes are flagged as overtaken and dropped from view. We show overtaken routes if they’re cheaper than the faster journey.

In this example, we’re saving the passenger 55% on their rail fare by surfacing a slightly slower but cheaper train in journey planners.

SilverRail's solutions aim to enhance transparency, efficiency, and competitiveness in the rail travel market, ultimately benefiting passengers by providing them with more choice and opportunities to save money on their journeys.

Train