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TICKETING & FARE COLLECTION
Smarter ticketing
Two recent developments could really move smart ticketing on rail up a gear, says Lindsay Robertson, chief executive of ITSO.
L
ast month, the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) launched a review of the retail market for the sale of rail tickets.
The purpose of the review is to ‘consider how current regulation and industry arrangements and practices within the retail market are facilitating choice and, in particular, promoting investment and innovation in the best interest of passengers’.
Also in February, the rail industry body FutureRailway* announced a £2m competition to reduce ticket barrier congestion, saying it wants to “look at alternatives to the existing gate-line and ticket detection system in order to cope with increased passenger flows within the same floor space. Safety, security, and revenue protection will be significant factors in finding a solution to this challenge.”
This competition also insists that any solutions proposed should fit in with the DfT’s vision for ticketing, focussed on ITSO (the national standard for interoperable smart ticketing).
A reality at last
But where is smart ticketing in Britain now? Although widespread on bus, after several years of talking about it, smart ticketing on rail into London is now a reality – on a growing scale – at last.
Southern has become the first operator to offer rail passengers weekly, monthly and annual season tickets on ITSO smartcards. This breakthrough was launched by transport minister Baroness Kramer in October.
Their passengers can load seasons for journeys to London Victoria, London Bridge, Clapham Junction and East Croydon onto their ‘the key’ smartcards - either buying online, or from a Southern self-service ticket machine outside the London Travelcard area.
More than 15,000 ‘the key’ cards have been issued to Southern customers and they currently use them for an average of 3,900 journeys a week (202,800 a year). 100 people
78 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 14
have already opted to get their season tickets to London Victoria on their smartcards.
Upgrading TfL’s infrastructure
Upgrading the ticketing equipment on Transport for London’s (TfL) system to accept ITSO-compliant media like ‘the key’ has always been seen as the pivotal point for introducing smart ticketing on rail. After all, 61% of the 1.5 billion rail journeys a year in Great Britain either start or finish in London.
There is no doubt that rail passengers like the idea of smart ticketing, however it might be branded. A Passenger Focus study published last year states: “There is clearly an appetite for smarter ticketing among commuting rail passengers, both in terms of moving the ticket format from paper tickets for added convenience, and in being able to access more innovative and flexible ticket types as a result, so saving money.”
But the effective implementation of technology is probably not the biggest challenge in smart ticketing. Particularly with rail, the world wide web is awash with gizmos to help people wade their way through the complex business of trying to get the right seat on the right train at the right time for the right price, splitting their tickets if necessary. Simple it ain’t…
Stripping out unnecessary and outdated products and processes
ITSO has been taking part in a transport dialogue with key transport ministers and MPs regarding the government’s door to door strategy. Together with representatives from some of the big engineering companies, we’ve pointed out that the technology does and can work across all regions and modes of transport – but it requires operators, ticketing equipment manufacturers, and system developers to cooperate, paying particular attention to stripping out unnecessary and outdated products and processes and delivering what the paying customer wants.
ITSO CEO, Lindsay Robertson, has been
involved in smart ticketing for over 10 years, including working with TfL’s Oyster team, and says that the industry has a huge amount to learn from this highly successful smart ticketing scheme.
He said: “In some senses it was much easier in London because of TfL’s governance structure and the nature of its contractual relationships with the providers of its public transport. TfL has always had a clear vision of the desired outcomes, can stipulate the product structure, and only has to worry about its tickets working in London with its own operators.
“In the rest of the de-regulated country, we rely on operators working together when it is not obviously in their commercial interests to do so. This has resulted in a hotch potch of different schemes springing up throughout the country and there is now a critical need to try and bring them together for the passengers’ benefit.
“It’s not simply a question of opting for one technology in preference to another, but rather building the environment that allows alternatives – i.e. ensuring the passenger, the customer, has access to the right product, at the right time, and in the form that they want to use. And the technology will, of course, continue to evolve: for example ‘the Cloud’ and ‘always on’ connectivity have the potential to bring many more solutions to the market than when ITSO was first conceived.”
Smarter cities
But ITSO can be used as the basis for systems which can cope with existing and future
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