Case Study
NoWcard
Tools Involved
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Public Transport Payment Systems.
Site Problems
In England, concessionary travel passes are issued to eligible residents by concessionary travel authorities. Conventional “flash” passes are open to counterfeiting and fraudulent use. This fraudulent use can occur through use of “flash” passes by ineligible people and use by eligible residents outside of concessionary hours.
Revenue reapportionment between operators and authorities in the North West of England (as elsewhere) relied on manual data collection by the bus operators supplemented by costly periodic surveys by the Local Authorities. Where existing flash passes were properly checked by drivers, boarding times were slow.
Scheme Description
The function of the NoWcard scheme is to provide concessionary travellers with smartcards that demonstrate their entitlement to free or reduced cost travel on the region's buses. The aim is to streamline the passenger boarding process, whilst preventing fraud, enabling greater interoperability of ticketing between operators and improving the accuracy of revenue reapportionment of concessionary fares between operators without incurring excessive data collection costs.
The scheme consists of smartcards, smartcard readers and back office systems to process smartcard transactions. Currently the scheme is used for concessionary travel only; however the back office elements have been designed to enable easy migration to commercial ticketing applications.
Over 310,000 NoWcards have been produced and distributed to travellers (as at October 2007). The scheme is supported by 65 different bus operators and covers 1800 buses. On boarding the vehicle the passenger passes their smartcard within close proximity of the smartcard reader on the bus. The trip is then registered. The scheme is lead by a partnership, covering Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool Unitary Councils and Lancashire and Cumbria County Councils, with Cumbria as the lead authority.
The main supplier on this project is a supplier of fare collection systems, a major bank acts as sub-contractors and provides the back office functions including the ITSO Host Operator or Processing System (IHOPS) and Asset Management System (AMS) elements. The bank currently provides an outsourced service, with the option for the NoWcard consortium to take this in-house at a later date.
ITSO Compliance
The NoWcard scheme is ITSO conditionally certified, full compliance is expected to be confirmed by March 2008. Compliance with ITSO means that the system and ticketing used meets the requirements of the ITSO specification. ITSO is the organisation that oversees this initiative and has members that include bus operators, train companies, suppliers and local authorities. The objectives of ITSO are to:
- enable the use of smartcards;
- allow transport operators to “mix and match” smartcards;
- enable use of a range of point of sale and back office systems;
- hold entitlement, value and tickets securely; and
- encourage genuine interoperability.
The ITSO specification covers a variety of features. This includes the contactless smartcards themselves, point of sale terminals, back office structure, data formats, data transfer and data security.
Merits of ITSO Compliance
The merits of ITSO compliance are mainly benefits due to interoperability. Should any component of the scheme need to be replaced, multiple suppliers may be selected. This ensures that the most competitive products are available to the operators. Further to this, the scheme enables interoperability of ticketing with any other ITSO compliant implementations, subject to appropriate data sharing between systems.
The flexibility ITSO offers allows further developments to be added to the scheme later more easily and more cheaply than they otherwise could. There is additional scope in an ITSO certified scheme as the smartcards can be integrated into other schemes for example a general “Citizencard” scheme to provide additional services. Other ITSO compliant schemes are under development across the UK and include schemes in Scotland, Wales and Yorkshire.
ITSO is also referenced within the E-Government Interoperability Framework.
Next Stages
There are plans for cross-border running between separate ITSO compliant smartcard implementations by Stagecoach North West in Cumbria and Stagecoach Western (SW Scotland) during early 2008.
The back office elements of the scheme are currently being re-engineered to accommodate English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS) cards from end of 2007. All existing NoWcard users will automatically be issued with ENCTS cards, where holders of NoWcards are not users, or there appear to be data issues, pre-printed forms for renewal of cards to conform to ENCTS will be issued to holders.
06-Aug-2009en considered a success having achieved its objectives. Production and take up of the cards are high and the system is proving reliable. There have been some delays incurred due to the change in concessionary fare structure in 2006.
Costs
The overall cost of the completed scheme is estimated to be £7,000,000. This cost covers deployment of NoWcards for concessionary fares and deployment of on bus and back office systems to support both concessionary and commercial products. The cost has been partly borne by the DfT, with capital from Partners LTPs and contributions from District and Unitary Councils. Roll out of commercial ticketing products will require additional investment.
Benefits
Smartcards can result in faster boarding of public transport vehicles which can translate into reduced journey times, they can also result in reduced fare evasion and improved data collection. Dependant on how the scheme is deployed, such schemes can be used to assist in stimulating regeneration by making access to employment easier through shorter journey times to employment and through providing free/subsidised Public Transport to those seeking work.
Benefits are shown in the table below.
Benefits Expected |
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Impact Assessment |
Environment |
No benefits expected or reported. |
Accessibility |
No benefits expected or reported. |
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Safety |
No benefits expected or reported. |
|
Efficiency and Economy |
No benefits yet reported, benefits may accrue from faster boarding times etc. |
|
Integration |
Benefits accrue under the other Government Policies sub-objective related to achieving e-Government objectives. |
|
Technical Performance |
Showed low reader/ETM failure; |
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User Acceptance |
Accepted positively by passengers but no formal results yet reported. |
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No attempt has been made to validate the results reported. Users of the guidance are encouraged to assess the robustness of the results presented and the likely transferability of the case study to their own local environment.
More Information
For more information please see:
E-Government Interoperability Framework: http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstandards/egif.asp
Information on the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/regional/buses/concessionary/
