Baker signals travel revolution: but just where could it lead?

Government backing for a new approach to achieving genuine multi-modal travel has been signaled by transport minister Norman Baker. It comes as technologies and delivery systems for information and payment are set for radical change. Peter Stonham takes stock of what may emerge from this major step change.

Norman Baker’s personal enthusiasm for making public transport journeys more accessible through a national standardised multimodal smartcard scheme has focused attention on the revolution now going on in the way transport services are marketed, sold and paid for. The scheme for a national smartcard system was put in hand under the previous Government, and the new local transport minister has now lifted its profile to a higher level. But like many such broad brush commitments, the devil is in the detail.

It is quite a challenge to get a nationwide ticketing scheme that is useable across all transport modes, and that suitably compensates the carriers for journeys that have been made on their services. Just ask those involved in the national concessionary fares scheme. On top of this there is the question of whether smartcard technology is in fact the right way to deliver 21st Century payments for travel. Mobile phone applications are quickly becoming an option for issuing and collecting authority to travel, and have the added benefit of offering an open communication between suppliers and users so that changes can be notified, additional information provided, and immediate issues addressed when services are affected by disruption, etc.

Advocates of the next generation systems are asking whether committing to smartcards is actually the right decision, and maybe the Government should skip a technology, given that its planned scheme is unlikely to be put into place for four or five years, despite Baker’s accelerated target date.

Interestingly, the original deadline was 2020, the title of this month’s major exhibition and conference on the future delivery of passenger transport services taking place at the Oval on the 29th and 30th of this month.

The minister himself is expected to expand on his vision when he opens the event, and many of the issues raised by Norman Baker will be explored by leading experts,a selection of whose views on the future are given on the page opposite.

The revolution goes well beyond how people will find out about and pay for their bus and rail travel. Options are emerging for linking those kinds of payment with other transport-related purchases – parking being the obvious first link to make – and then onto additional areas of consumer spending from retail to leisure purchases. Meanwhile, a group of enthusiasts for open data and crowd-sourced information are exploring the possibilities for customers to give their own feedback to the service providers about how and where travel facilities should be provided and how options can be better presented online, through publicly displayed information points and through mobile phones on the move.

The magic link between smartcards and mobile phones could be made by Near Field Communications – the ability to read a smartcard at a distance by a compatible chip system that exchanges data between customers and suppliers. In the end it could mean that chip cards are inserted in the mobile phone to combine the two technologies. It could revolutionise the way payments are made, bank accounts run, bills paid and money received and not surprisingly the banking industry sees this territory as something it needs to make its own. Just as Visa and Mastercard emerged from within the banking industry a couple of decades ago to revolutionise the way people spend money, the new system could be another whole area of enterprise for intermediaries getting between the customers and their transport suppliers.

Questions therefore remain unanswered about where the driving force for all this upheaval will be. The banks and financial services sector? The mobile phone systems and network suppliers? Some kind of publicly-driven facilitation involving government agencies? Or thought the transport operators themselves.

Sceptics believe that the transport operators may be about to miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be at the centre of a much bigger business than just providing services to get people from A to B. They could be the core element in a transactions and information revolution, but if they do not take the lead now it is likely their role will shrink to merely logistics providers; in the same way that the retail industry simply buys its transport for goods from specialist contractors and lays down its requirements about when, how and where they should provide deliveries. In the meantime, there is a scramble going on to ensure that the revenue and the commission that goes with selling travel is captured by the train operators. As well as the rail settlement plan, which allocates receipts from the nation’s train travel purchases, individual TOCs are able to retail their own and others’ services online and receive the associated commission. Businesses like Thetrainline.com are hoping to hoover up more of this valuable activity and are leading the way with the mobile phone transactions project that is being implemented by Masabi, the innovative next generation mobile phone technology  developer.

The bus operators have been stirring slowly to embrace the revolution but there is a diversity of approaches. Smartcard implementation is still the favourite route for the majority of the big groups, and within the PTEs, but interestingly Arriva, now owned by DB, has been doing most to get on board the mobile phone bandwagon. DB’s other significant transport investment, Chiltern Trains, has also been pioneering mobile phone systems. With other continental interest in the UK’s transport system including Veolia, Transdev and RATP (the Paris transport operator) it seems likely that systems that are now being developed in Europe may be highly significant elements in the eventual UK matrix. Norman Baker’s vision – and even his speeded up timescale – may be eminently achievable. But the jury is still out on quite how the revolution will be delivered in practice.

Hear the minister and join the debate at Travel2020 on September 29th and 30th. Visit www.travel2020.co.uk to attend