HID
Improve Fare Revenues and the Passenger Experience by Upgrading to a Modern, Future-Proofed Ticketing Infrastructure
This article first appeared in the Bus-News Magazine Issue 1 2024.
By Arthur Tay, Product Marketing Manager – Access-IS Business Unit within HID
Growing consumer demand for ‘smart ticketing’ solutions is being driven by rapid urbanisation as well as technological advances such as RFID and near-field communication (NFC).
Today’s solutions are used in mass transit applications ranging from ticket vending machines (TVMs), gates and turnstiles to stand-alone platform validators and on-board products. Transportation authorities and operators who have not adopted these technologies operate with an outdated ticketing infrastructure that puts them at risk of irritating passengers and losing revenue. They must modernise or risk losing passengers – perhaps permanently.
Contactless ticketing has slowly been incorporated into public transportation over the past 20 years, which accelerated during the pandemic. As ridership continues its rebound, now is the time for transit authorities and operators to upgrade their aging ticket-reading hardware and move towards a more digital or mobile paradigm that will enhance the passenger experience and maximise revenue. The latest readers give passengers a single point of presentation for any ticket, regardless of orientation, and the ability to make contactless payments, all via a single interface. They also offer a range of benefits to operators, today and into the future.
What Consumers and Operators Want
Passengers want to go beyond physical tickets. Most resent the inconvenience of having to buy tickets in person, and a growing number also want to access their digital tickets from an app and add them to their digital wallets. Many want to use the same method of payment on a mass-transit trip that they use when shopping or entering a hospitality venue.
Public-facing transportation ticketing systems must address these preferences. Each category of passengers has different needs, learning curves and technology access and every group must be accommodated.
Transit authorities have their own needs, including reducing ticket fraud and using transit journey information to make data-driven, real-time operational decisions. They also need to optimise passenger throughput, and they want a path to contactless payments so they can reduce the expenses associated with handling cash.
Supporting these needs shouldn’t require a rip-and-replace ticketing system deployment. Operators can’t afford any disruptions during the transition to a new system, nor can they complete the cut-over process so quickly that people have insufficient time to gradually adapt to and adopt the new capabilities, at their own speed.
