TICKETING & FARE COLLECTION
The other key announcement, he said, was the £45m to accelerate the introduction of fl exible season tickets into the South East cordon around London.
He said: “That’s going to be a signifi cant change in terms of rolling this out quickly but also in ensuring that, when ITSO on Prestige goes live in 2014, the operators are ready to take advantage of it.
“For the fi rst time in rail, we’re starting to get the traction that’s required to give op- erators the confi dence to talk about ITSO ahead of franchises, which is quite a step forward.”
Clearly, ITSO is not just about rail, but public transport ticketing in general and making journeys simpler over multiple modes. This means that the rapid advances happening in the bus industry are worth noting.
Leach explained: “The big news there is that the likes of Go-Ahead and Stagecoach, who were in the vanguard of the process last year, have been joined now by First Group and Arriva. Also, in areas like Merseytavel’s region, Transport for Greater Manchester, and Centro, there’s lots of work going on about integrating services, from light rail through to main line rail and buses. That’s going to make a massive difference in terms of the passenger experience.
“Walrus in Merseyside, for example, is fully ITSO-compliant and the great thing there is that it’s not just land transport – that will be rolled out across the ferries in Mersey- side very shortly.”
The number of ticket machines connected up to the ITSO environment has jumped
from 32,000 to 70,000 over the last year.
In simple terms, Leach said, that means that “a whole range of areas across the country that weren’t smart, now are”.
He added: “The biggest change we’ve seen is the growth in commercial schemes. This time last year, we had about seven or eight; we’ve now got just under 85 different commercial schemes operating across the country.
“That number’s going to grow. A lot of that’s down to individual bus operators like Stagecoach or Go-Ahead, but also the fact that some small operators are now com- ing into it. There’s been a lot of work in the south west of England, Wales, Manchester, Merseyside, and the north east of England. Things are really starting to come along and we’re getting pockets of interoperable smart ticketing across the country, which is really very good.”
Leach sounds confi dent that the industry will meet the Government target of half of public transport journeys being by smart ticketing by December 2014, but is not making guarantees.
He explained: “Those key Government de- cisions, especially the support for the south east, will make meeting the target much more likely.
“The rest of the country has been going great guns on bus ticketing, and we’re well on track with that, particularly with First Group and Arriva now pushing ahead. On rail, two big franchises, the WCML and GWML, are both likely to have some imple- mentation targets before the end of 2014 and that together with the work on ex-
tending the ITSO on Prestige programme means we’ll be covering most of the big commuter belts into London very quickly.
“If you look at the DfT’s statistics, 70% of all rail journeys either start, fi nish or change in London, so if that’s delivered on time, the Government will achieve its ob- jectives and probably surpass them.”
One of the big drivers for change is the clamour for fl exible season tickets and a better alignment of incentives to ease congestion and improve the passenger experience. Concepts like soft-peak and shoulder-peak, season tickets that encour- age rather than penalise people who prefer to work from home sometimes, and so on, are all vital to meet passengers’ changing needs, while also better managing demand.
The Government is expected to make sev- eral recommendations and policy changes along these lines in its upcoming fares review – which has been ‘upcoming’ ever since former transport secretary Philip Hammond announced it in response to the publication of the McNulty review in May last year. Bodies like the Campaign for Bet- ter Transport have called for more fl exible fares options for passengers and simpler multi-modal journey options, and backed the drive towards smart ticketing.
Such fl exibility “has to” feature in the fares review, Leach suggested.
He said: “If you look at the pressure on rail journeys into London, particularly in that south east corridor, the trains are absolute- ly full; you’ve got the decision by Southern to get rid of the toilets to get more space on the trains for people to sit down; those sorts of things have a major impact on peo- ple, and the ability to incentivise journeys at different times will take away a lot of that peak pressure.
“The idea of introducing a discounted 10- trip card, that you can use whenever you want to, is something Norman Baker’s been talking about for quite a long time. I can’t see the fares review coming up with anything that’s different to that. There’s probably going to be more than just that; credits to be built up perhaps, fi nding other ways to improve things. I spend enough time on the trains my- self to know that con- gestion can be quite appalling.”
Michael Leach
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rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 12 | 35
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