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Smartcards storm the world’s cities

Posted: 1 April 2005 | James Abbott Technical Editor | No comments yet

More and more cities are ditching paper-based ticketing systems and adopting smartcards instead.

Smartcards are becoming more popular as mass production brings the price down and the advantages of ‘going smart’ become more apparent. Embedding a chip in a ticket is more expensive than holding data on a magnetic stripe on the back of a piece of card, but the enhanced management information the chip offers makes it worthwhile to make the switch. A chip can hold much more information than a magnetic stripe.

More and more cities are ditching paper-based ticketing systems and adopting smartcards instead. Smartcards are becoming more popular as mass production brings the price down and the advantages of ‘going smart’ become more apparent. Embedding a chip in a ticket is more expensive than holding data on a magnetic stripe on the back of a piece of card, but the enhanced management information the chip offers makes it worthwhile to make the switch. A chip can hold much more information than a magnetic stripe.

More and more cities are ditching paper-based ticketing systems and adopting smartcards instead.

Smartcards are becoming more popular as mass production brings the price down and the advantages of ‘going smart’ become more apparent. Embedding a chip in a ticket is more expensive than holding data on a magnetic stripe on the back of a piece of card, but the enhanced management information the chip offers makes it worthwhile to make the switch. A chip can hold much more information than a magnetic stripe.

For example in the UK, where smartcards have become quite well established in bus operations, the driving force behind adopting the new cards was to give an accurate count of the number of senior citizens using the buses. This would allow accurate compensation of private sector bus operators by local authorities subsidising old age pensioner travel. Before adoption of smartcards the compensation was based on sample counts, which could be subject to inaccuracy and dispute. With smartcards, an accurate count is available as soon as the bus reader is downloaded in the depot at the end of the day’s business.

But there are many other advantages with smartcards. For example, they can be used for sophisticated fare offers, enticing commuters away from the high peak into the shoulder peaks by way of a discount. And they can be used as ‘electronic purses’, with uses outside the mass transit systems for which they were designed. For example, in Hong Kong car parking can be paid for by a debit from a smartcard, thus obviating any need to fish around in pockets for change – the same card will also serve as a ticket on the Mass Transit Railway.

The advantages of smartcards are such that some systems are being proposed that will cover complete countries. In Denmark, Rejsekort A/S is planning a new system that will link all of Denmark’s rail and bus operations to a smart national travel card. The project, for which Thales has been selected as preferred bidder, will include system design, development, project management, delivery, installation, operation, maintenance, financing and additional business opportunities arising from the use of a single card in the country. Rejsekort is expected to award the contract this year; the system will be put into operation gradually, beginning in 2006, and is expected to cover the country in 2009.

Besides the exciting Danish project, Thales has had considerable success in Asia, with recent smartcard contracts in New Delhi, Taipei and Singapore. But as well as the Danish job for which it has been lined up, Thales has also expanded elsewhere in Europe – with a project in The Netherlands being particularly notable. Last year the East-West Consortium of Thales, Accenture and Vialis, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with GVB, the public transport company in Amsterdam. GVB is one of the five major Dutch public transport companies that has opted for the first multimodal contactless e-ticketing system to be introduced on a national scale in The Netherlands. In order to achieve this, GVB is a part of the joint venture Trans Link Systems, together with NS (Dutch National Railways), RET (Rotterdam public transport), HTM (The Hague public transport) and Connexxion (a bus and tram operator).

In the programme for GVB, each consortium member provides complementary capabilities. Thales, through its Transport & Services business Thales e-Transactions CGA SA, provides its smartcard know-how and experience in the conception and implementation of secure, large-scale, integrated fare collection systems; Vialis installs and maintains the system’s physical infrastructure, such as smartcard readers and ticketing and fare machines. Accenture operates the system’s back-office, which includes clearing and settlement of revenues for the participating transport companies.

The whole contract is worth over €120 million. The new system will be deployed first in the Rotterdam area. Trans Link Systems and its partners aim to achieve full nationwide coverage for the electronic ticket by 2007. The new system covers all forms of public transport: trains, buses, trams, metros and ferries.

The system uses a rechargeable contactless smartcard enabling passengers to move easily between all forms of public transport. They no longer need to queue to buy a ticket or pass through a gate. Trip information will also be used to improve services by optimising staffing levels and equipment availability to meet passenger demand.

Big cities

While a national system sounds big, systems for the world’s major cities may be bigger than those for a small country. For example, London, with a population exceeding seven million, has adopted the Oyster Card, a smartcard system that covers a range of period tickets on the Underground, bus and light rail in the British capital. Cubic Corporation and the US computer services company EDS are the two major shareholders in the TranSys consortium that delivered the Oyster smartcard project, which the partners describe as the world’s largest automatic fare collection implementation and operations contract for mass transit.

Cubic is an American company big in the defence sector that has been expanding in smartcards, with notable success in North American cities such as on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco. While the firm has a major European presence in smartcards with the London Oyster project, it has been trying to expand on the European mainland as well. It tried for the Rejsekort tender in Denmark in conjunction with its Oyster partner EDS and the Denmark-based division of Siemens as a major subcontractor.

While not being selected as preferred bidder there, Cubic has had success in Italy, where it has received a €3.5 million contract from Azienda Trasporti Collettivi e Mobilita (ATCM) SpA in Modena. The contract is to build, install and maintain an advanced fare collection and revenue management system that will link bus and rail services to a common contactless smartcard. In addition, ATCM awarded Cubic a five-year contract extension, valued at approximately €300,000 per year, on its existing service contract.

Under the new contract, Cubic will upgrade Italy’s first magnetic-based fare collection system, which was installed by Cubic Nordic in 1993, with its state-of-the-art smartcard system. Cubic will deploy its ‘on-bus’ processing platform, consisting of a driver control unit and validator, throughout ATCM’s bus fleet of 405 vehicles. This platform integrates, in one single device, automatic fare collection and intelligent transportation systems, such as GPS-based vehicle tracking, passenger counting, video surveillance and other transit management applications.

Cubic will also install 35 smartcard validators at ATCM’s two rail lines, which will allow commuters to pay for trips on bus or rail using a single smartcard. Passengers will pay their fares on the station platform using the validators before the trains arrive instead of onboard the train.

Enhancements will also be added to the agency’s back office system. Introduction of the new system starts this spring, with full-system operations by later in the year.

Success in France

Another company from outside Europe bidding for smartcard systems on the Continent is Australian firm ERG, which has established an office in Belgium. The ERG Group has installed systems in major cities throughout the world including Hong Kong, Melbourne, Rome, San Francisco and Singapore, with installations in progress in other cities such as Seattle, Sydney and Washington DC. ERG has delivered systems that support more than 20 million smartcards in circulation and handle approximately five billion transactions per annum.

In 2004, ERG had considerable success in France, winning smartcard installation contracts in four French cities. Typical is the latest such contract, from the Conseil General De La Gironde in the Bordeaux region of France. ERG Transit Systems has been chosen to provide and install a smartcard fare collection system under a contract with a value of €2.4 million.

The new system, which is due to be completed in mid 2006, will allow the use of paper tickets, magnetic stripe tickets and smartcards, greatly increasing passenger convenience. It will be installed on 350 buses serving the interurban area.

In addition to the Conseil General De La Gironde, recent tenders awarded to ERG in France include ones from Department of Bas-Rhin Strasbourg, Clermont-Ferrand and La Roche/Yon.

Scandinavia

In Scandinavia ERG has won considerable business in Sweden, with contracts to install smartcard systems in the capital, Stockholm, and Gothenburg.

In neighbouring Norway, home-grown company Q-Free is coming on to the advanced ticketing scene. Q-Free made a name for itself in road tolls, collecting tolls on a motorway east of Trondheim from 1988 onwards and also participating in the Oslo cordon toll scheme established in 1990. In 1998 Q-Free won a contract for installation of an electronic ticketing system in the county of Sør-Trøndelag, which the company says is the first integrated payment system on a large scale in Norway.

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