Attitudes to data privacy amongst rail passengers and implications for service provision

Rail operators, in common with other public transit operators, are under pressure to meet increasing passenger expectations, especially given a step change in the level of information provision and on-board equipment enjoyed by private car users. Research has shown that a bespoke passenger-centric approach may be necessary to meet these expectations. Personalized services often require users to give up personal data, which may have privacy implications. Following an overview of possible uses of data in the rail industry and the potential trade-offs with data privacy concerns, details of survey work undertaken on the UK national rail network in January and February 2020 are presented. The results are compared with an earlier study of road users and their concerns about Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), which identified four distinct clusters of privacy views, one of which was unique to a transportation context. The results in this case could be clustered in the same way, although more work needs to be done to understand any links between passenger type (in terms of journey purpose, regularity and so on) and privacy concerns. The results do however show some general willingness amongst rail passengers to trade privacy concerns with service improvements. This paper also provides a good basis for future comparative studies to assess the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on attitudes to data privacy (given that “track and trace” systems have subsequently become ubiquitous, for example)