Highlights from Transport Ticketing Global 2023 - Featured Case Studies & Tech

Highlights from Transport Ticketing Global 2023 – Featured Case Studies & Tech

20th March 2023

In our second post of highlights from Transport Ticketing Global 2023 we summarise some key transit ticketing case studies, technology solutions, and announcements featured at the event.

Case Studies

The event showcased global projects bringing insight into the wide range of challenges that transit agencies have around the world. The range of different approaches to solve local challenges in innovative ways and the clever use of technology, was a breath of fresh air to many in the audience. Stand out presentations included:

‘Tagless’ Fare Payment for Public Transport in a Megacity ‘Seoul’ from Joanne Yu at T-Money, talking about their Be In Be Out’ trials. This provided deep insight into the innovation deployed and was very honest around some of the challenges to adopting BIBO-based solutions.

“Beyond the idea of transportation ticket in the time of Smart City development in Taiwan” from Ting Chen and Ivan Chiu, from EasyCard. Whilst much of the rest of the world is making a headlong dash to open loop, EasyCard are exploiting the potential of their closed loop solution developing new use cases and promoting the card through various means, including creating the card in collectable form factors. They were enthusiastic and engaging as presenters, showing real passion to drive integration of services beyond just transit ticketing, in areas such as retail, financial social inclusion, social services payments and ID.

New Concepts & Technologies

It was great to see a number of innovations and emerging touch-less ticketing solutions not only being discussed at the event but actually being rolled out in successful user trials, globally. So-called Be in, Be out (BIBO) solutions are starting to gain traction. These use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology on mobile devices communicating with a multitude of beacons in locations such as buses and train stations to automatically identify and validate ticket holders without the requirement for any direct interaction with the user or use of barrier/gates etc. For example, the Seoul public transit authority plans to expand their current BIBO-based trial to a full public launch by 2025. It was also great to see smaller technology providers such as ZED Digital showcasing solutions in this space.

Listening to a number of presentations on this topic, it’s clear this technology has huge potential to both reduce cost and improve the passenger user experience but there are still clear technological challenges to overcome here, particularly around the placement and configuration of BLE beacons to accurately and reliably identify users, particularly in very busy environments. The theme of social inclusion becomes very relevant here in that are obviously a significant number of travellers who for various reasons would not be able to utilise this kind of solution.

On the devices side, it was encouraging to see a growing number of providers of ticket validating devices and solutions improving the portability and functionality of devices, including supplementary features such as the ability to photograph/log incidents directly from the device. This is an attractive proposition for example, smaller bus/tram operators whereby drivers and conductors can re-utilise these devices to easily capture and log faults and issues with their vehicles.

Announcements

The following event related announcements and news articles caught our eye: