'Private sector needed’ to speed up smart media for bus fares

03 June 2009

Speeding up the slow take-up of smart media for bus fare payment needs major private-sector involvement by bank card issuers and mobile phone network providers, members of ITS UK heard in London last week.

Grant Klein, a senior transport consultant with information management specialist Detica, urged a radical separation between transport operators receiving payment for running their services, and independent charging service providers.

These would automatically collect, process and distribute fares paid electronically, using widely-accepted methods such as credit/debit cards and mobile phones. This separation of roles echoes the model already envisaged in the projected European Electronic Tolling Service, on which Klein is an adviser to the Department for Transport (DfT).

The EETS aims to deliver seamless road travel on the basis of accurate measurement of journeys made on European toll routes.

‘We will only realise the full benefits of smart media fare payment when it becomes pervasive’, said Klein. ‘Learning from what is planned for road pricing could remove some of the present barriers to pervasiveness’.

Meanwhile, he said, the DfT needed to incentivise operators to equip their vehicles with smart media reading equipment, for example, through the Bus Service Operators Grant system.

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