The Department for
Transport has announced that Arriva,
First Group, Go-Ahead Group, National Express and Stagecoach will have contactless travel on all of their buses by
2022.
Transport
Minister Andrew Jones welcomes progress as biggest 5 UK bus operators announce
contactless travel for all buses by 2022.
Millions
of bus and rail passengers across the UK will in future be able to pay for
their travel using contactless cards and devices as Transport Minister Andrew
Jones today (12 January 2016) marked 3 major milestones to accelerate the
introduction of smart-ticketing.
At
a speech to the UK Cards Association, Andrew Jones will hail a smart ticketing
tipping point and he will praise transport operators, the cards industry and
city authority, supported by the Department for Transport’s Smart Cities
Partnership (SCP), for prioritising the introduction of the new technology.
Last year, the SCP brought together 9 city regions outside London to agree how
best to introduce smart ticketing to make journeys easier for passengers
travelling across different types of transport or on different operators.
Smart
ticketing offers more convenience and flexibility for passengers, allowing
seamless connections across different modes of transport and helping reduce
ticket queues and crowding at transport interchanges. There are currently
700,000 smartcards in use in SCP cities.
Ahead of his speech,
Transport Minister Andrew Jones said:
"The
smart ticketing revolution is helping to build a modern, affordable transport
network that provides better journeys for everyone. By working together,
industry, city regions and government have been able to ensure more and more
people can use smart ticketing to get around. We are determined to continue
driving progress so passengers get the quick and simple journeys that they want
and deserve."
The
work of the SCP has helped city regions to achieve the following:
·
the
UK’s big 5 bus operators have announced they will bring contactless travel to
every bus in Britain by 2022, with many areas benefiting sooner
·
the
rail industry has agreed a tranche of funding and a new framework to explore
how contactless payments could be introduced for rail season tickets or
long-distance train travel, so passengers no longer have to print out tickets
·
Centro,
West Midland’s integrated transport authority, backed by £620,000 of DfT
funding, is extending the Swift smartcard across the region - in September
2015, passengers started using the Oyster-style cards at the redeveloped
Birmingham New Street station and from next month Swift cards will work on
buses, trams and trains in the area
·
city
regions across the country have rolled out the technology including capped
Nexus card travel in Tyne and Wear for affordable travel, and brand new
multi-operator bus cards in Brighton and Manchester so passengers save time and
money by using 1 card for all bus services in their city
·
The
rail industry’s contactless ticketing framework follows DfT’s work with the UK
Cards Association, which represents the card payments industry, and will look
specifically at the benefits that could be offered by 3 different contactless
transit models. These will cover Pay as You Go (PAYG) for set fares and also a
PAYG model for multiple uses during a day or during a journey. A pre-purchase
model will also be explored to replace paper tickets where a contactless card
or device is associated with the ticket in advance and then used as a form of
identity to travel.
The
participating SCP local transport authorities across England include:
·
Centro
·
Leicester
City Council
·
Merseytravel
·
Nexus
·
Nottingham
City Council
·
South
Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive
·
Transport
for Greater Manchester
·
West
of England Partnership
·
West
Yorkshire Combined Authority
Supporting
bus operators include:
·
Arriva
·
First
Group
·
Go-Ahead
·
National
Express
·
Stagecoach
·
Album
– the Association of Local Bus Company Managers
As I've said before,
the local authorities and bus companies forming their own contactless
smartcards is a step forward towards a
cashless society. London Transport already have the smartcard contactless
system called the Oyster card and
they've already implemented the use of Contactless payment cards for their
London Rail, Tube and London Bus services. The use of Contactless Payment cards
led the move towards red London buses becoming ‘cash free’!
Metrobus
(part of Go-Ahead group) has implemented a 60 minute transfer for their ‘m-ticket’.
The
new 60 minute Metrorider is available on our app from 16th January at the
following prices in the Crawley, Horsham and Redhill & Reigate Metrorider
areas:
Adult
|
Child
|
Child 3in1
|
Student 3in1
|
£2.10
|
£1.05
|
55p
|
£1.05
|
This
new m-ticket is flexible and convenient allowing you to board as many buses as
you want within 60 minutes in the metrorider zone - this is ideal for those who
need to get across town but need to change between routes.
This new ticket
replaces the £2 single journey m-ticket.
Croydon Tramlink
provides a similar scheme which gives you transfer to the selected bus routes.
Both
pay as you go and paper single tickets cover one transfer made between trams,
or between trams and connecting bus routes 64, 130, 314, 353, 359, 433 and 464
(made within 70 minutes of touching in
to pay as you go at the start of your journey, or within 90 minutes of
buying a paper single ticket).
Hopefully soon, we'll
see when TFL will enable transfers for London Buses which would enable
passengers to connect to the other bus at the allotted time for Pay As You Go
users. There are no plans for TFL to implement this yet but I've seen from the
GLA that they do want to implement that scheme.
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