Accurate and trustworthy, real time, information on journey times and ticket prices is crucial to helping more people to want to use public transport.
That was the conclusion of the latest meeting in the
Dods Transport Dialoguesurrounding the Government’s door-to-door strategy.
This roundtable concentrated on how new technologies could be used to improve the passenger experience.
Having a mobile phone app, for example, that not only finds the easiest journey for just you but enables you to buy the cheapest ticket is seen as something to aim for. Using a smartphone’s GPS to then have information tailored to your specific needs, in real time, when bad weather or other problems disrupt your original journey plans is all ‘do-able’.
Transport Minister Baroness Kramer, responsible for the DfT’s door to door strategy and smart ticketing, said that the smart ticketing agenda was ‘absolutely crucial to the advancement of transport’.
She recalled the positive impact that the Oyster system had on the public’s attitude towards taking journeys, and the overall efficiency it had brought to the transport system in London.
But she felt the amount of progress on smart ticketing elsewhere in the country had been ‘limited and slow’, and wondered whether we should now be looking at different technologies, such as contactless bank cards which are now being used on London’s buses.
Lindsay Robertson, CEO of
ITSO Limitedwhich looks after the UK’s national specification for smart ticketing, said the current
ITSOspecification and technology was fit for purpose now and future-proofed for some considerable time yet.
ITSOcan, for example, be used to enable travellers to pay for public transport journeys with their smartphone.
He also pointed out that contactless bank cards can currently only be used to pay for a limited range of low-priced tickets costing £20 or less, particularly in metropolitan areas, and that a lot of journeys, particularly those on rail, exceed that value. Smart ticketing schemes offer passengers much more choice in what tickets they buy and what price they pay. But the two methods should sit side by side, offering choice to the traveller.
Lindsay said he felt that one of the main things holding up the delivery of an integrated transport system using smart ticketing was ‘a single controlling voice’.
He called for greater direction, either locally or centrally, and added that transport businesses needed to be willing to share data so it can be used to help passengers make better-informed choices.
This was all very well, said Transport Select Committee Chairwoman Louise Ellman, but it was important to remember that not everyone had access to technology, or wanted to use it in relation to public transport.
There was also concern around the table about proposed closure of ticket offices – even if customer relations staff were then freed up to act as roaming assistants on railway platforms.
PPS to the DfT ministerial team, Julian Sturdy (Con, York Outer), added: “We mustn’t leave anyone behind. We think about the commuter, who knows the transport system… but there are lots of people who only travel once a year and for them there is an uncertainty.”
The roundtable was chaired by Times transport correspondent Philip Pank and also attended by Alec Shelbrooke (Con, Elmet and Rothwell), a member of the City Regions’ Transport APPG. It was also supported by representatives from
Alstom, the DfT,
Siemens, and
Thales.