Case Study

SWWITCH Smartcards

Example smartcard design, Photo courtesy AECOM.Tools Involved

  • Public Transport Payment Systems.

Site Description

South West Wales Integrated Transport Consortium (SWWITCH) is a partnership between Carmarthenshire, Neath Port Talbot, Pembrokeshire, and the City and County of Swansea. SWWITCH aims to promote the development of quality public transport across South West Wales.

The smartcards scheme is one project administered by SWWITCH. Smartcards allow users to automatically pay for their travel using an electronic card which may be obtained free of charge. Smartcards also enable concessionary travel for elderly and disabled people on registered local bus services throughout Wales and discounts on fares for some rail journeys. Smartcards went live on April 2003 and there are currently 400 equipped buses and 100,000 cards in operation.

Site Problems

The Welsh Assembly Government offers free bus travel to elderly and disabled passengers. For these passengers no money changes hands when boarding, which made it very difficult for the government to financially monitor the fares to be refunded to the various private bus companies.

Scheme Description

Contactless Smartcards use Philips Mifare chips to store and transmit the fare/user information. To register a transaction the user must pass the card within a few centimetres of the Electronic Ticketing Machine (ETM). The transaction is stored in an ETM, which at the end of a shift is physically taken out and loaded into the bus depot reader. The depot then sends the transaction information to the Head Office Processing System (HOPS). The HOPS processes the transactions before sending the billing information to the 'back office' systems, which will be responsible for billing the user or the Local Authority paying the concessionary fare.

Scheme Objectives

SWWITCH initiated Smartcards in an attempt to:

  • improve financial monitoring of concessionary fares;
  • provide better security to users (no money changing hands); and
  • integrate different modes of travel within SWWITCH.

Improvements

It is anticipated that the system will:

  • simplify the use of public transport;
  • speed up bus boarding times;
  • reduce the administrative burden; and
  • increase the use of public transport.

Integrated Systems

Due to the Smartcard's ITSO compliance it will interoperate with other UK schemes.

The Smartcards can incorporate other government and corporate services (e.g. leisure, ID card, library card, retail).

Costs

Estimated cost for introducing the smart cards scheme for the SWITCH area was £1.8 million.

Benefits

No benefits have yet been reported.

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.