Ticketing

Ticketing’s role to meet transit’s unpredictable needs

For transit planners, the ability to predict passenger behaviours, needs and wants is imperative to meaningful decision-making, says Philippe Vappereau, General Manager, Calypso Networks Association

Accommodating these behaviours helps unlock public transit’s attractiveness over private vehicle usage – a critical objective for cities worldwide. Today, networks face a growing need for greater flexibility. This goes beyond structured transit networks to consider new, alternative mobility services and a ticketing offer that combines flexibility with value for money. What does this look like, and what do planners need to consider when scoping ticketing strategies to offer increased flexibility while meeting passenger expectations?

The age of the agile passenger Today’s passengers display significantly more agile travel patterns, driven by trends such as flexible working arrangements. We are seeing a gradual erosion of fixed commuting patterns, but many passengers are now also using public transit for the first and last steps of their journeys. This means traditional fare options and siloed ticketing experiences are no longer viable, as they risk diminishing public transit’s attractiveness, nudging passengers towards private vehicles.

The pressure is on Public Transport Operators (PTOs) and Public Transport Authorities (PTAs) to deliver a ticketing offering for agile passengers. Achieving this in a scalable, cost-effective way is a significant challenge, but the first step is identifying the pressure points. Let’s take a look…

Flexible fares for flexible passengers The first step to supporting agile travel is creating a fare and tariff structure that is less rigid and capable of unlocking better value. Today, more PTOs and PTAs are expanding their offering beyond traditional weekly/season tickets to include more flexible options, including pay-as-yougo (PAYG). However, as with any agilefocused strategy, there’s a balance to be struck, and the challenge for planners is to offer agile ticketing to boost public transit attractiveness, without negatively impacting revenue.

Ticketing for Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) To meet evolving transit needs, many PTOs and PTAs are exploring how to diversify beyond structured networks to support the first and last step of every passenger’s journey. Ticketing’s role in this field is essential to offer a full, seamless, joined-up experience.

Reflecting the digital-first nature of MaaS, mobile ticketing will be the core driver here. However, adopting a digital-only mindset with ticketing for MaaS runs the risk of excluding a significant proportion of passengers. Planners need to consider the needs of all passengers, including the unbanked and digitally excluded, and bring them on board to help MaaS policies succeed. This means considering the role of ticketing smartcards, already used by millions of passengers around the world each day and integrating MaaS payments with existing infrastructures to ensure mass (and MaaS!) inclusion.

Delivering a smarter, contactless ticketing experience Nonetheless, we recognise that the IoT revolution is bringing new levels of connectivity and convenience to consumers.

Ticketing, therefore, needs to look to developments in this space to bring the same benefits to passengers and support increased flexibility. In the same way that digital ticketing is a driving force for MaaS adoption, NFC technology and mobile solutions will underpin advanced ticketing solutions. Early steps exist with mobile QR ticketing, but these can be viewed as a medium-term solution at best if ticketing is to fully emulate the convenience of the wider IoT sector.

Given the scale of these pressure points, and the need for a quick response to support permanent change in ticketing and transit, what tools are available to PTOs and PTAs?

Meeting expectations with open vs closed loop ticketing Merging daily payments with transit ticketing through open loop ticketing solutions is one approach many PTOs and PTAs are exploring to offer flexibility for passengers.

Open loop is typically when a passenger uses their contactless EMV® bank card or digital wallet on an NFC-enabled device (smartphone or wearable) for ticket purchasing and validation. It relies on the infrastructure put in place by payment networks such as Mastercard, Visa, and American Express and relies on EMV technologies. In addition, we are also seeing hybrid open/closed loop solutions emerge with white label/closed loop EMV ticketing.

Just as with MaaS, planners need to consider the ticketing needs of all passengers with their ticketing strategies, an objective that open loop might not achieve as it automatically excludes unbanked passengers. In addition, planners need to consider the needs of passengers who simply want to keep using their regular, trusted smartcard and don’t want to merge payments with ticketing. A similar problem emerges with white-label EMV, which only supports Account-Based Ticketing (ABT), and which brings with it extra data protection considerations, such as compliance with Europe’s GDPR rules. For passengers who wish to maintain their privacy, this is another potential barrier to overcome.

Open loop solutions pose additional challenges when considering how to offer passengers better value for money with flexible ticketing. While its ability to support PAYG ticketing and enabling passengers to use the same card on any compatible network is attractive, creating a specialised yet commercially viable tariff structure is a challenge. EMV specifications are built primarily for the global payments industry (rather than the ticketing community) and do not allow network planners to write data onto the card. They can only read it.

To build a future for transit and ticketing that reflects the immediate challenges decision makers face, networks must have full ‘sovereignty’ over their solutions for their transformation strategies. This is where closed loop solutions based on open standards shaped by the transport community enter, offering PTOs and PTAs more control over their ticketing policies. Given the immediate need for flexibility and value, this is more essential than ever before. For example, managing a season ticket with closed loop-based media comes at a much lower cost than via EMV ABT. It also enables passengers to access every tariff type, including subscriptions, locally stored value and PAYG, all delivered with the same level of high performance and data privacy safeguards. medium and long-term future of transit ticketing. This is no surprise given the way urban mobility has and continues to evolve, creating smarter, greener cities with connected citizens empowered by IoT tech. The portfolio of ticketing technology will be a rich combination of open and closed loop solutions on networks that expand to meet the first and last step of every passenger journey. In tandem with this will be new fare media, such as mobiles and wearables, offering a smarter, contactless experience in tandem with tried and tested traditional solutions, such as the trusted smartcard solution, which will continue to evolve to adapt with changing passenger and network needs.

Supporting planners with this transformation is essential, and the right tools must be available to support rapid, scalable and cost-effective ticketing evolution. Examples include ensuring security and functionality through certification for mobile ticketing solutions. Free-to-use open source solutions like Eclipse Keyple will also be critical to empower developers of ticketing solutions to create innovative software, without the big price tag and ensuring full sovereignty.

The next twelve months will be a critical time for the transit community as it looks to navigate the current challenges and establish a solid base for future evolutions in ticketing. This is not going to be easy as it continues to face repercussions from almost two years of significantly reduced passenger footfall. Collaboration, education and innovation will be essential to help develop the solutions that will navigate transit’s unpredictability while generating a tangible ROI for passengers and networks alike.