10

September 2014 | Metro Report International

DIGEST Cities

TICKETING

London goes
contactless
T
ransport for London has
developed a Transit Transac-
tion Model enabling passen-
gers to pay for travel using
contactless bank cards at ticket barriers,
without needing a paper ticket or dedi-
cated transport smart card.
This required negotiations with banks
to develop new payment rules, and the
development of software which TfL
plans to license to other transport au-
thorities worldwide.
Contactless pay as you go travel is
already in operation on London buses,
and is due to go live on TfL-operated
rail services on September 16. A date
has not yet been finalised for main line
operators to join.
TTM is the outcome of a project to
think about the long-term future of TfLs
Oyster smart card. Developed from
2000, Oyster is a card-centric system
with the card holding the passengers
information, and all intelligence in the
card readers there are in effect 23000
billing engines across the transport net-
work. In contrast, TTM is a back-office-
focused system. It is intended to be more
convenient, as it does not require users
to obtain and load stored value onto an
Oyster card. TfL says there are currently
120000 Oyster touch-ins a day using
cards with no credit.
TfL studies found that the estab-
lished contactless payment methods
TFL
Electra contract
awarded
Cubic Transportation Systems has
won the Electra contract to maintain
TfLs ticketing and fare collection
equipment. This includes 1900 ticket
gates at London Underground and
London Overground stations, 1800
stand-alone validators, 1600 ticket
machines at 250 National Rail stations,
used for small retail transactions such
as buying a coffee were unsuitable for
transport. In a retail environment the
price is known before the card reader is
activated, but complex ticketing require-
ments mean that the fare is not known
until the journey is completed and any
fare capping calculations are processed
at the end of the day, week or other time
period. It is also impractical to handle
transactions manually at a station ticket
gate. A further problem was that re-
tail card readers ask for a Chip & PIN
transaction once the cumulative value of
payments on a card reaches a specified
threshold, typically 20. This is not pos-
sible for transport, where it would be far
too slow to do even if ticket gates had
PIN pads.
As a result, TfL had to develop a new
model which uses zero-value transac-
tions rather than individual payments,
so that the cumulative total is never
triggered. This required working closely
with the UK Cards Association, Ameri-
can Express, Visa, MasterCard and Bar-
claycard. Cards issued abroad will be ac-
cepted, and the technology could work
with any standards-compliant contact-
less device such as a suitable mobile
phone.
At the end of each day (or other spec- Oyster cards will contactless payment, but Oyster will
ified period) the back-office software not disappear, but continue to exist for the foreseeable
will be joined by
calculates the cost of travel, applying increasing numbers future. The main users are expected
any fare cap, automatically processing of contactless card to be children without suitable bank
refunds and then billing the passenger transactions. cards, and overseas users who would be
in a single transaction. Moving process- charged foreign currency fees by their
ing to the back office enables TfL to im- banks. There will also be people who
plement more advanced business rules choose not to use contactless payment;
than with Oyster, with a faster time to however, TfLs Director of Customer
market for new ticketing products. Experience, Shashi Verma, says that
As well as daily capping, TfL is to passenger research is incredibly posi-
introduce a Monday to Sunday cap. tive and that people trust TfL.
If a passenger forgets to touch out, the TTM was developed in-house us-
incomplete journey can be processed ing agile scrum techniques. The overall
before the customer is billed, rather roll-out cost was 66m, including fixed
than relying on the passenger contact- equipment modifications undertaken
ing TfL. Registered users will be able by Oyster maintenance subcontractor

readers on 8500 buses and 4000 retail
devices in shops.
The contract runs for seven years
from August 2015, with options for an
early exit at five years or extensions
of up to three years. Electra is
worth around 660m over 10 years,
an annual saving of 11m on the
current contract which is also held by
Cubic. n
66
to view journey and payment histories
online within 3 min of a journey be-
ing made. Ticket inspectors will be is-
sued with card readers which will re-
cord a zero-value transaction on a card,
meaning that a passenger who has not
touched in will be treated as having
made an incomplete journey.
TfL expects widespread adoption of
Cubic. However, TfL expects to more
than recover the 11m software devel-
opment costs through selling the system
elsewhere.
TfLs ticketing systems are now com-
m patible with the ITSO standards speci-
fied by the UK government for national
ROLL-OUT COST rail services. A date for this capability to
OF TTM go live is still to be announced. n