Interviews

Setting the standard

When RTM talked to ITSO chief executive Michael Leach a year ago, there were tentative signs that, with Government support, a wider switch to smart ticketing was finally underway. The rapid increase in operators making the leap has meant that 2011 was a busy year for ITSO – and 2012 will be even busier.

More and more franchises and stations are set up to handle smart ticketing using ITSO-compliant smartcards, while the parallel and rapid growth in the number of bus operators signing up has meant that proper interoperability and multi-modal journeys on one card are finally becoming a reality outside of London.

One phrase now being used a lot to describe the situation – unthinkable just a few years ago – is ‘critical mass’.

Pioneers have included Go-Ahead, via stations and routes that are part of the Southern and London Midland franchises, using its card branded as ‘the key’, as well as Stagecoach on East Midlands Trains, covering the majority of stations on its main Sheffield-Chesterfield-Derby-Nottingham- Leicester-St Pancras routes, though not yet any outside of this core region. Some routes on Stagecoach’s South West Trains services are also covered, while ScotRail, via its ‘SmartCard’, has smart ticketing at all stations from Edinburgh to Glasgow via Falkirk High.

Merseytravel and Merseyrail are also developing and rolling out more functionality on the Walrus card, which will be interoperable with the ferries in the region, too.

Michael Leach, chief executive of ITSO, said: “It’s been a very busy 12 months, and very productive in overcoming a lot of the issues that were confronting people and are starting to be ironed out, which is very good news.

“The biggest news on the rail side has been the successful launches on East Midlands Trains, London Midland and Southern, and they’ve all gone quite well – in fact, so far, they’ve exceeded expectations.”

Two important decisions by the Government have bolstered these successes, he said – firstly, the extension of the ITSO on Prestige programme, now ITSO on Prestige Plus, which is about integrating the ITSO specification with the Transport for London ticketing estate.

Transport for London notes that when its predecessor body awarded the original smart ticketing contract in 1998 ahead of Oyster’s deployment from 2003, ITSO standards were not yet in existence, and waiting until a national scheme was in place would have led to too many delays in the development of Oyster. But making Oyster systems ITSO-compliant is seen as key for extending interoperability – and despite some initial and well-publicised Transport for London concerns that is now progressing well.

Leach said: “The extension will enable the development of business rules, which have always been missing from the ITSO environment for integration into London. The ITSO specification is all about how to, technically, get suppliers’ kit to talk to each other so that operators will get the same information, and customers can use the same card on multiple services.

“What’s been missing from that is how you set up the commercial rules around acceptance, how data is prepared, how the commercial rules for profit-sharing and so on are put in place. As part of this programme, a lot of that will be addressed.”

The other key announcement, he said, was the £45m to accelerate the introduction of flexible season tickets into the South East cordon around London.

He said: “That’s going to be a significant change in terms of rolling this out quickly but also in ensuring that, when ITSO on Prestige goes live in 2014, the operators are ready to take advantage of it.

“For the first time in rail, we’re starting to get the traction that’s required to give operators the confidence to talk about ITSO ahead of franchises, which is quite a step forward.”

Clearly, ITSO is not just about rail, but public transport ticketing in general and making journeys simpler over multiple modes. This means that the rapid advances happening in the bus industry are worth noting.

Leach explained: “The big news there is that the likes of Go-Ahead and Stagecoach, who were in the vanguard of the process last year, have been joined now by First Group and Arriva. Also, in areas like Merseytavel’s region, Transport for Greater Manchester, and Centro, there’s lots of work going on about integrating services, from light rail through to main line rail and buses. That’s going to make a massive difference in terms of the passenger experience.

“Walrus in Merseyside, for example, is fully ITSO-compliant and the great thing there is that it’s not just land transport – that will be rolled out across the ferries in Merseyside very shortly.”

The number of ticket machines connected up to the ITSO environment has jumped from 32,000 to 70,000 over the last year.

In simple terms, Leach said, that means that “a whole range of areas across the country that weren’t smart, now are”.

He added: “The biggest change we’ve seen is the growth in commercial schemes. This time last year, we had about seven or eight; we’ve now got just under 85 different commercial schemes operating across the country.

“That number’s going to grow. A lot of that’s down to individual bus operators like Stagecoach or Go-Ahead, but also the fact that some small operators are now coming into it. There’s been a lot of work in the south west of England, Wales, Manchester, Merseyside, and the north east of England. Things are really starting to come along and we’re getting pockets of interoperable smart ticketing across the country, which is really very good.”

Leach sounds confident that the industry will meet the Government target of half of public transport journeys being by smart ticketing by December 2014, but is not making guarantees.

He explained: “Those key Government decisions, especially the support for the south east, will make meeting the target much more likely.

“The rest of the country has been going great guns on bus ticketing, and we’re well on track with that, particularly with First Group and Arriva now pushing ahead. On rail, two big franchises, the WCML and GWML, are both likely to have some implementation targets before the end of 2014 and that together with the work on ex tending the ITSO on Prestige programme means we’ll be covering most of the big commuter belts into London very quickly.

“If you look at the DfT’s statistics, 70% of all rail journeys either start, finish or change in London, so if that’s delivered on time, the Government will achieve its objectives and probably surpass them.”

One of the big drivers for change is the clamour for flexible season tickets and a better alignment of incentives to ease congestion and improve the passenger experience. Concepts like soft-peak and shoulder-peak, season tickets that encourage rather than penalise people who prefer to work from home sometimes, and so on, are all vital to meet passengers’ changing needs, while also better managing demand.

The Government is expected to make several recommendations and policy changes along these lines in its upcoming fares review – which has been ‘upcoming’ ever since former transport secretary Philip Hammond announced it in response to the publication of the McNulty review in May last year. Bodies like the Campaign for Better Transport have called for more flexible fares options for passengers and simpler multi-modal journey options, and backed the drive towards smart ticketing.

Such flexibility “has to” feature in the fares review, Leach suggested.

He said: “If you look at the pressure on rail journeys into London, particularly in that south east corridor, the trains are absolutely full; you’ve got the decision by Southern to get rid of the toilets to get more space on the trains for people to sit down; those sorts of things have a major impact on people, and the ability to incentivise journeys at different times will take away a lot of that peak pressure.

“The idea of introducing a discounted 10- trip card, that you can use whenever you want to, is something Norman Baker’s been talking about for quite a long time. I can’t see the fares review coming up with anything that’s different to that. There’s probably going to be more than just that; credits to be built up perhaps, finding other ways to improve things. I spend enough time on the trains myself to know that congestion can be quite appalling.”

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