Heads up.
Attendees of the Transport Ticketing and Passenger Information conference in London last week (26-27 January 2016) were left in no doubt on one key issue. The death of the mag stripe rail ticket. For years considered the de facto permit to travel on millions of journeys, the days of the “tangerine ticket” are numbered.
Modernisation programmes in the UK rail industry necessitate adoption of newer technologies.
But which?
RDG’s vision for Rail ticketing.
Graphic courtesy of ATOC.
The vision of the Rail Delivery Group (RDG) will need to be realised somehow. We inhabit a world (in Great Britain at least) where the Train Operating Company (TOC) provides the ticketing medium and the validation method. RDG is looking for a transition where the Customer provides the ticketing medium and the Operator provides the validation method.
But what it really wants is a “new world” where the Customer provides the ticketing medium and the validation method. See diagram above.
I see your mag stripe and I raise you smart cards.
Claire Perry MP (@claire4devizes) (Member of Parliament for Devizes and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport) in her opening keynote in the Joint Plenary on Day One gave the clearest indication yet the mag stripe is to be discontinued. Exact dates are yet to be announced but 2017 looks to be very realistic possibility.
Claire Perry MP
In Rail, the mag stripe “tangerine” ticket still makes it possible to travel from any start point to any end points in Great Britain, regardless of operator and fare product.
(On the buses, paper based tickets deliver similar end to end permit to travel.)
Any replacement certainly needs to do the same.
With smart ticketing emerging quickly, Perry spoke plainly about Department for Transport (DfT) intention to make smart ticketing a mandatory requirement for new and renewing franchises, placing the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the TOCs to be ready with their own systems, or use the back office platforms already procured by the Rail Settlement Plan and DfT.
All part of ”a refreshed Government perspective on transport ticketing” according to Perry.
Perry mentioned South East Flexible Ticketing (SEFT) which is presently being trialled live by Abellio Greater Anglia, the operator of the Great Eastern Mainline (GEML). SEFT delivers a single integrated back office platform which is cloud-enabled and powered by a high availability and secure open source technology stack to support smart ticketing.
I see your smart cards and I raise you EMV cards.
Delegates to the EMV Transport Forum in London (28 January 2016) were treated to an exposé on how the public transport sector is feeling about contactless payments and about the three models in the framework:
- Single Pay as you go
- Aggregated Pay as you go
- Pre-pay
The UK Cards Association (@UKCards) is – rightfully IMHO – taking a lead on this but working alongside the dominant acquirers, payment processors and card issuers.
Briony Krikorian-Slade
Briony Krikorian-Slade (Principal Policy Advisor at The UK cards Association) and Adrian Burholt (Programme Manager at The UK Cards Association) addressed a packed room.
They were assisted by cameo appearances before a timely coffee break from Mike Lewis (Stakeholder & Customer Requirements Manager at Transport for the North) and from Annette Street (Transit Manager EMEA, Partnerships and Digital Strategy at American Express), each bringing and industry view of the project.
Very informative stuff it was too.
After the break, we heard again from the quick thinking and fast talking Adrian Burholt followed by an excellent and salient perspective from John Backway (Head of Commercial Development at The Go-Ahead Group) on back office implications on bus and rail ticketing.
“Contactless in travel and transport is probably our biggest “untapped” market opportunity,” said John Alexander (Head of Acquiring at Barclaycard) during his talk.
Speakers and representatives were brought forward for an open Q&A panel session in which Jonathan Hill (Product Owner Contactless Payments at Transport for London) seemed, for many, to offer the stand out contribution of the whole panel discussion.
I see your EMV cards and I raise you mobile barcodes.
Of course, there exists a strong school of thought that card-based ticketing is entirely a thing of the past. The democratisation of mobile devices and proliferation of mobile apps represents something of a unique opportunity to “dump” cards of any description and start enjoying some very tangible benefits that mobile offers to passengers and operators (rail, bus and both).
After all, we all carry a mobile. Or do we?
What about the unbanked? What about visitors to our country? What about older people who might not be able, or willing, to embrace such things?
Where is the social inclusion in making ticketing available exclusively to the mobile enabled portion of the population?
Whilst the likes of PayPal might regard “Mobile Movers” (their market segment name for Millennials) as the prime audience for their 3-taps-and-you’re-done ticket payment pitch – and David Smallwood (Head of Sales at PayPal UK & Ireland) did present a compelling case for the digital express in his 10.10am session in the Joint Plenary on Day One – but I’m unsure if everyone is confident to pay that way.
Not least the operators themselves; they don’t want the elevated merchant fee; they definitely don’t want the anonymity that makes the relationship with their customers one-time removed.
Savvy operators, such as Transport for London, want to improve passenger experience with real-time passenger information as well as easier convenient ticketing. And as a lighthouse for smart ticketing in the UK, they should know.
“We’re a retail business that happens to do travel,” said Andrew Anderson (Business Design Manager at Transport for London) in his 9.50am session in the Joint Plenary on Day One.
and repeated
“We’re a big data and open data business that happens to do travel,” said Dale Campbell (Operational Research & Analytics Manager at Transport for London) in his 10.50am session Platform Two on Day Two.
Not heard it put quite like that before. Seems logical though.
I see your mobile barcodes and I raise you mobile tokens.
Why go to all the bother of having to generate and place an image of a code on a mobile screen, only for a code reader to scan it, verify it and approve that it is a valid permit to travel? Can’t all that malachi be done entirely digitally?
Why is it such a big ask for radio frequency (RF) technology such as near field communication (NFC), radio frequency identification (RFID) or another adoptable variant of communications wizardry to be deployed that would make the mobile device carried by passengers “talk to” the device carried by the ticket inspector (ahem – nobody utter the words “Fat Controller”).
This is entirely possible already. Technically.
Proponents of ‘mobile everything’ argue it’s bonkers to be considering anything less than mobile for ticketing. They would.
The point is, if you think of a token it is probably the way forward. Whether that token is on a print at home sheet of paper, a smart card, a mobile device should largely be the choice of the passenger, and not an obligation placed on them by the operators.
Or is that just me being plain daft?
I’d welcome a sanity check from you on that.
I see your mobile tokens and I raise you internet of things (IOT).
Movers such as the Internet of Things Association (IOTA) and Smartex are, for example, already running events to look at how IOT applies in the transport sector. Albeit very early days, IOT is rumoured to be the next wave but it’s applicability to public transport remains very sketchy at this time.
I’d be prepared to wager that it might turn into something very significant. But at the conference last week, I recall nothing being mentioned on IOT, which might indicate that IOT is not very high on the agenda with public transport industry insiders.
I see your IOT and I raise you embedded nano chips.
We’re not quite ready for 007-style chips to be implanted into our wrists. Or are we? Early adopters in the technology lifecycle might beg to differ. These visionary people, it seems, are prepared to try almost anything once to push technology to its limits to be able to claim they were “first”.
Nano chips may not be so far-fetched as they first appear. It’ll happen in my lifetime (FYI – I’m not planning on going anywhere soon). But as a standalone solution for a permit to travel? – that’s unlikely. A lot of factors have to come first. A monumental philosophical, anthropological and cultural shift to name but one (okay – three).
One glimmer of hope for the futurologists among us might be in the remarks over Twitter by Ben Whittaker (Head of Innovation at Masabi) who advocates the idea of passengers not merely bringing the ticket but BEING the ticket.
Disruptive innovation indeed.
I see your nano chips and I raise you a rainbow-coloured unicorn.
Fold. Too weird. Let’s not even go there.
Show us your hand.
During the entire three days (TTGlobal conference 26-27 January, TTGlobal Awards 26 January and EMV Transport Forum 28 January) I heard “Bitcoin” cited only once. But not even a whisper of “blockchain”. I wonder why.
Food for thought – eh?
Also, it struck me at the conference why smart cards or even mobile apps don’t mimic the tangerine colour associated with train tickets. Just a thought. No extra charge for that idea.
Overall, I thought Zehra Chudry (@ZJChudry) and her team at Clarion (@Trans_Ticketing) produced one of the best run sequence of events I’ve ever seen. Bravo ladies and gents. You’re conference super stars.
Would I return and would I recommend this conference to others?
That’ll be a yes.
Join the conversation on Twitter #TTGlobal #ticketing #smartcards #EMV #contactless #mobile #IOT
Updated on 05 Feb 2016
This post has also been published on the Future Payments website.
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