Thousands of passengers have already saved money from fare capping, facilitated by advanced Ticketer ETM technology partnered with Littlepay payment services, in the first use of capped contactless fares outside London.
Ticketer has installed a second card reader on Brighton & Hove and Metrobus buses to offer passengers frictionless travel, and the machines went live two weeks ago. The use of contactless to tap in and tap out already eclipses customers using contactless to buy a paper ticket, accounting for over £125,000 worth of travel in the first week.
Graham Pether, Retail Project Manager for The Go-Ahead Group, comments: “As a result of introducing Ticketer machines, and now Tap On / Tap Off, contactless payment represents 40% of all on-bus transactions. So not only has it been warmly received, take up has been extremely positive.”
He goes on to say: “We estimate that as much as ten seconds overall per transaction might be saved, and while this is a very early estimate, we hope that by making the boarding process more efficient we can improve journey times and, in the long term, increase frequencies on key routes.”
Using Ticketer Tap On / Tap Off technology, Brighton & Hove know exactly how much the journey has cost the passenger, and gathers invaluable data on passenger behaviour.
Passengers on either Brighton & Hove or Metrobus services now always pay the best fare possible. The Ticketer ETM and Littlepay technologies combine to provide a daily cap on fares regardless of the type of ticket requested by the passenger.
Littlepay CEO Amin Shayan comments: “We’ve seen a smooth start to multi-operator capping in Brighton, with large numbers of passengers taking advantage of the simplicity of the contactless payments system operating across Metrobus and Brighton & Hove services. There have already been over 120,000 transactions using Tap On / Tap Off by over 50,000 different customers, thousands of whom have enjoyed savings on their travel as a result of daily fare caps.”
Go-Ahead Group chief information officer Enrique Fernandez said: “We are delighted to offer a simple new fare for our passengers in the South of England, limiting the cost of travel and offering the best value fare, regardless of which buses they use. We believe that public transport should be easy, convenient and affordable, and this new Tap On / Tap Off scheme will allow the customers to travel with ease and the comfort of knowing they are only ever paying for the exact trip they take.”
Brighton & Hove Buses’ Managing Director, Martin Harris, said: “This represents an important step in extending fare capping to other local bus operators and making journeys even more convenient for passengers. We’re eager to work with other local operators on this opportunity and we’re working with the IT Department at Go-Ahead to make this possible in the future.”
Brighton & Hove Bus tickets, key cards and mTickets are currently accepted on Big Lemon buses and most Compass services in Brighton & Hove. This uses Go-Ahead’s back office systems and Ticketer ticket machines.
John Clarfelt, Ticketer CEO, concludes: “Passengers no longer need to ask the driver for the correct ticket. They now simply board, tap, tap, and exit. So everyone wins! Passengers have access to a convenient and economical payment method; boarding times are significantly reduced and operators further benefit from a wealth of journey pattern data.”
For further information please contact:
Mercedes Llewellyn
mercedes.llewellyn@ticketer.co.uk
