Plan for pay-as-you-go ticketing in Manchester in early 2026

Pay-as-you-go ticketing on suburban rail lines in and around Manchester will come into force by early 2026, as part of the city’s plans to take control of eight lines and integrate them into the existing Bee Network of buses and trams.

“There will be joined-up ticketing between buses and trams, with daily and weekly caps. Then we will roll in the integration of the eight lines in Manchester, which naturally align with the metro-style service for the region,” Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s Transport Commissioner Vernon Everitt told RAIL.

“The hardware will go in next year, so people will be able to tap in and go in early 2026. The customer experience element is of equal importance to the service enhancements that we are planning.”

Everitt added: “The important thing is to offer an integrated service which encourages people to use public transport.

“We have a big modal shift target, and we want to deliver a better set of options for people.

“We want rail ticketing to added into the daily and weekly cap. We want the customer information to be joined-up across all of the forms of transport, but it doesn’t mean we want to run signalling or tracks.”

As part of the devolution of rail services to the local region, Manchester is aiming for eight lines to come under its control by 2028.

It will set out its milestones for the project in January, with an aspiration to increase the number of services compared with the current timetable. Trains will be branded as part of the Bee Network but will be operated by Great British Railways.

Everitt added: “Many of these stations are served by one train an hour, and our aspiration is to up that where possible to four trains per hour - which in London would be regarded as a backwards step, but we’ve got a long way to go.

“These milestones will have been agreed with Northern, with Network Rail and the Department for Transport, because we want this to be collaborative, but the staging posts take us through to 2028.”

Everitt said he is confident of there being sufficient crews and rolling stock to operate an enhanced timetable, despite the current issues that face the region.

“We would like to see resolution of the issues, because frankly the damage on central Manchester of having a non-functioning railway at the weekend is profound, and we need that to be fixed. Hopefully with goodwill on all sides we can get there,” he told RAIL.

“We’re not party to the conversations between the unions and the operator, but we need it to be resolved because we’re the customers.

“There is a recognition on all sides that the service that’s being delivered to the people and businesses of the North isn’t good enough and needs to be fixed.”

Referring to the timetable, he continued: “It needs to be worked through. Nobody has spoken to the trade unions or anyone else because we’re at the early stages. But Northern is out to reprocure the rolling stock, and we’re confident we can utilise the existing stock more effectively.”

Everitt also called on the government to devolve further: “Station accessibility is a big deal, and we would hope we can get the Access to All money devolved to us so we can make faster progress, because we want more people to travel by rail spontaneously; and it is very, very difficult to do that at the moment,” he concluded.