The hidden cost of cashless travel

How a cashless society risks leaving behind England’s most vulnerable people.
Client

Transport Focus

Project typeData journalism
SectorSocial impact
A compilation of the final visualizations created for Transport Focus, sat side by side on a blue background.

Cash is still a lifeline for many people. Especially for the 2% of UK adults who don’t have a bank account. And especially when it comes to essential services like rail travel.

Transport Focus asked us to help show policymakers and transport officials why people should always be able to pay for train tickets with cash, particularly in areas it's needed most.

So we analysed data from 428 train stations across England to create a series of creative yet easy-to-read data visualizations that show what proportion of people buy train tickets using cash or card.

But these charts also reveal a deeper societal story: we pulled data from England’s Index of Deprivation to map how reliance on cash is vastly different in the country’s most and least deprived areas.

For example, at rail stations in England’s most deprived areas, up to 50% of tickets are paid for in cash. Yet in less deprived areas, that number falls below 20%. Packed with insights, these charts show why cash remains so important for so many people. And how a cashless society risks leaving behind those who are most vulnerable.

A scatterplot chart showing the use of cash for transactions in more deprived and less deprived areas. It shows the proportion of cash transactions are higher in the more deprived areas.
A scatterplot chart showing the use of cash for transactions in more deprived and less deprived areas. It shows a cash usage gap where stations in the most deprived areas see twice the cash usage of those in the least deprived areas.
A circular bubble chart showing the number of entries and exits in stations. The colour of the bubbles indicate the proportion of cash transactions in those stations. It shows that some busy stations in the most deprived areas of England still see high cash use.
A set of four scatterplot charts showing the use of cash for transactions in more deprived and less deprived areas. Each chart is one of four areas of England, North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, South East and South West. It shows that across England, stations in more deprived areas see a higher percentage of cash transactions.

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