TICKETING AND PAYMENT
Interoperable smart ticketing:
an idea whose time has come
Martin Howell, worldwide communications director at Cubic Transportation Systems, discusses interoperable ticketing technology.
F
ebruary 15 2012 was an important date in
contactless electronic ‘smart’
the development of interoperable ticketing, in
which a single medium — a smart card or a mobile phone, for example — supports multiple types of tickets issued by different mass transit operators and valid on multiple modes of transport.
On that date, the leading ticketing organisations from the UK (ITSO), France (AFIMB) and Germany (VDV-KA), along with the Calypso Networks Association, signed a Memorandum of Understanding whereby they will work to bring about interoperable ticketing throughout Europe.
The Memorandum was a product of the European Interoperable Fare Management Project (EU-IFM),
whose aims include
developing standards that ensure cross-border interoperability of transport smartcards by 2015. In turn, the EU-IFM is one of numerous interoperability-inspired initiatives around the world, evidence of the increasing interest in the subject.
Interoperable smart ticketing — also often referred to as interoperable fare management (IFM) — is not a new phenomenon.
London’s Oyster smartcard, which enjoys almost iconic status among public transport ticketing solutions, was introduced in 2003. Oyster is valid on buses, London Underground and Overground trains,
trams, the city’s
Docklands Light Railway, most National Rail services in London, and some river services. To date, some 43 million cards have been issued and over 80% of public transport journeys in London are made using Oyster.
28 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 13
But while IFM may be an idea whose time has come, there are a number of challenges — eco-
The success of Oyster has inspired a host of similar schemes, but — like Oyster — almost all are centred on particular cities, regions or networks.
Going forward, the challenge for interoperability is to combine these local schemes to create national schemes, which is precisely what the national ticketing organisations (ITSO, AFIMB, VDV-KA, and so on) are working on. The next step is to add a further level of cross- border interoperability — hence the EU-IFM Memorandum.
It is in mass transit’s interests that EU- IFM and similar initiatives make progress, because interoperable smart ticketing is a key component of almost every proposal for the integrated public transport systems of tomorrow, be it the European Bus System of the Future (EBSF) or visions of an integrated, multi-modal urban travel payment and information platform such as Cubic’s Nextcity. Nextcity visualises integration at a ‘whole-of- transport’ level, combining urban travel ticketing and revenue management with private modes of transport such as bicycles, motor vehicles, long- distance rail and commuter fl ights.
nomic, technological, commercial and cultural — that must be met to turn the idea into a real- ity. Some of the issues around IFM, and the so- lutions to them, are relatively easy to identify, though not necessarily easy to implement: for example, the need for international standards to aid cross-border interoperability between different national schemes. Others, however, are more complicated.
One such is the current speculation about whether the competition between different ticketing media and technologies — smartcards, EMV-enabled credit and debit cards (i.e. those that conform to the Europay, Mastercard and Visa standard) or Near Field Communication (NFC)-enabled smartphones — will produce a ‘winner’ in the way that VHS video ‘won out’ over Betamax.
In fact, as will become clear later, they all have to win, because the travelling public wants to choose the medium that suits them, and in the fi nal analysis the customers will decide.
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