TICKETING & FARE COLLECTION
When RTM talked to ITSO chief executive Michael Leach a year ago, there were tentative signs that, with Government support, a wider switch to smart ticketing was fi nally underway. The rapid increase in operators making the leap has meant that 2011 was a busy year for ITSO – and 2012 will be even busier.
M
ore and more franchises and stations are set up to handle smart ticketing using ITSO-compliant smartcards, while the parallel and rapid growth in the number of bus operators signing up has meant that proper interoperability and multi-modal journeys on one card are fi nally becoming a reality outside of London.
One phrase now being used a lot to describe the situation – unthinkable just a few years ago – is ‘critical mass’.
Pioneers have included Go-Ahead, via sta- tions and routes that are part of the South- ern and London Midland franchises, us- ing its card branded as ‘the key’, as well as Stagecoach on East Midlands Trains, cov- ering the majority of stations on its main Sheffi eld-Chesterfi eld-Derby-Nottingham- Leicester-St Pancras routes, though not yet any outside of this core region. Some routes on Stagecoach’s South West Trains services are also covered, while ScotRail, via its ‘SmartCard’, has smart ticketing at all stations from Edinburgh to Glasgow via Falkirk High.
Merseytravel and Merseyrail are also devel- oping and rolling out more functionality on the Walrus card, which will be interoper- able with the ferries in the region, too.
Michael Leach, chief executive of ITSO, said: “It’s been a very busy 12 months, and very productive in overcoming a lot of the
overcoming a lot
issues that were confronting people and are starting to be ironed out, which is very good news.
“The biggest news on the rail side has been the successful launches on East Midlands Trains, London Midland and Southern, and they’ve all gone quite well – in fact, so far, they’ve exceeded expectations.”
Two important decisions by the Govern- ment have bolstered these successes, he said – fi rstly, the extension of the ITSO on Prestige programme, now ITSO on Prestige Plus, which is about integrating the ITSO specifi cation with the Transport for Lon- don ticketing estate.
Transport for London notes that when its predecessor body awarded the original smart ticketing contract in 1998 ahead of Oyster’s deployment from 2003, ITSO standards were not yet in existence, and waiting until a national scheme was in
place would have led to too many delays in the development of Oyster. But making Oyster systems ITSO-compliant is seen as key for extending interoperability – and despite some initial and well-publicised Transport for London concerns that is now progressing well.
Leach said: “The extension will enable the development of business rules, which have always been missing from the ITSO environment for integration into London. The ITSO specifi cation is all about how to, technically, get suppliers’ kit to talk to each other so that operators will get the same in- formation, and customers can use the same card on multiple services.
“What’s been missing from that is how you set up the commercial rules around accept- ance, how data is prepared, how the com- mercial rules for profi t-sharing and so on are put in place. As part of this programme, a lot of that will be addressed.”
34 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 12
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