Ticketing and Concessionary Travel on Public Transport - United ...

Transport Committee: Evidence Ev 67
10. A major characteristic of the public transport networks in the urban areas of those other countries
is consistently <strong>and</strong> carefully applied capital investment. It is the careful application of that investment that
really matters: we fall down on that in this area of technology, as we do with many areas of technology
applied to public services. Thankfully, there is a move (eg Transformational Government, but perhaps more
importantly a growing feeling that more <strong>and</strong> more civil servants are determined to do better) to be more
careful in our use of investment money, but I still believe that there are major lacunae that continue to negate
much of the possibilities for benefits.
11. A final note: long distance coach services are currently operated entirely separately from other modes,
with no sign of a move towards integration with those other modes, either of ticketing or, in the larger
picture, of services.
2. Does the Government have an adequate strategy for developing the integration of ticketing systems?
12. Not any more; perhaps it never really did, as it may well have been that only a small number of civil
servants (the key one in DfT, Eric Sampson, has recently retired) really understood what ought to be done,
although I submit that their concept of how it should be done has never been adequate: nowhere enough
application of the needs for thorough planning <strong>and</strong> for engineering discipline.
13. Having been working recently with the trade association PSSG 2 on this topic, I do not know of any
such strategy, despite the commitment to seamless travel as long ago as the 1988 Integrated Transport White
Paper. Indeed, on heavy rail services ticketing has become more fragmented <strong>and</strong> increasingly diYcult for
either customers or sellers to underst<strong>and</strong>. In particular, the selling by or for TOCs of tickets for use on
specific, timed rail services has been causing considerable distress, because ticket validity is not checked at
the point of boarding: after departure, those who get on the wrong train are charged the full open ticket
fare by the Train Manager. The “Putting Passengers First” paper (see Annexes below) about bus services
concentrates only on proposals that attempt to improve punctuality <strong>and</strong> reliability (note that those are very
technical terms in the industry <strong>and</strong> in regulatory circles, not necessarily having the meaning that the common
man or woman assign to them), to the exclusion of all other benefits to the passenger. For long distance
coach services there are no government strategies for integration of ticketing, either within that mode or
between that mode <strong>and</strong> other modes.
14. The strategy has to have two parallel streams:
— commercial arrangements that benefit the traveller; <strong>and</strong>
— technology <strong>and</strong> management that enables eVective <strong>and</strong> eYcient delivery.
15. Commercial arrangements have been severely restricted by the application of competition law. There
have been some improved guidelines recently, but I believe that that is nowhere near enough for the large
commercial organisations currently operating most of the UK’s surface <strong>and</strong> sub-surface public transport.
Despite guidelines from OFT, there is always the risk that massive commercial disruption will be caused if
OFT changes its mind. An operator of public services needs a long term stable environment, <strong>and</strong> so do the
passengers. I have repeatedly used the phrase: “its no good accepting a guideline if the OFT can on a whim
change it <strong>and</strong> come <strong>and</strong> hit you with a hammer”—they can stop what you do, tying up company executives
in a long <strong>and</strong> expensive investigation, <strong>and</strong> levying massive fines. Bus operating companies 3 in particular run
lean on supervisory, admin <strong>and</strong> managerial staV, so that any investigation is extremely disruptive.
16. Technology has to be carefully planned <strong>and</strong> managed: its an engineering job. The TfL Oyster scheme
in the end came good after a shaky early development period, but with its present technology it is not scalable
much further than its present scope, <strong>and</strong> separate Oyster technology schemes in diVerent areas of the country
cannot link up in the way that ITSO-compliant schemes are designed (<strong>and</strong> proven) to do—thus there is no
interoperability between Oyster technology schemes. Oyster may, however, by adding ITSO technology, be
capable of being economically applied to other urban areas linked into national interoperability 4 —but
present tests indicate that, even with some optimisation, performance of an ITSO compliant mode
embedded in an Oyster scheme, in terms of throughputs through station gates, may not always meet the
current contractual performance commitment to TfL.
17. Currently it is unfortunately the case that ITSO Ltd <strong>and</strong> its developments are not managed as a Best
Practice engineering company <strong>and</strong> project, <strong>and</strong> DfT, despite its significant funding for ITSO Ltd, has failed
to trigger improvements. 5 The generic problem with a Company Limited by Guarantee without shares is
that the Members have little opportunity to influence the incumbent management, <strong>and</strong> most of the Directors
(generally operating as volunteers) find it extremely diYcult to influence a dominant cohort of managers (or
even of Directors). By contrast with ITSO Ltd, Network Rail works extremely well, through having an
excellent team in charge, but in the long term such a corporate arrangement has some in-built risk.
Nevertheless, Network Rail is successful in delivery terms <strong>and</strong> has gained the financial strength to source
2 Public Sector Supplier Group. See their statement on this topic (submitted to Transcom <strong>and</strong> also available at www.pssg.biz)
3 The big groups organise their bus operations into many regional operating companies.
4 Eg in a competitive procurement process it might be that another metropolitan area purchases an ITSO compliant Oyster
badged scheme.
5 DfT does not have a Director on ITSO’s Board, <strong>and</strong> has to be careful not to be seen as a Shadow Director.