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

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Ev 20 Transport Committee: Evidence Wednesday 5 December 2007 Members present Mrs Gwyneth Dunwoody, in the Chair Clive EVord Mr Eric Martlew Mrs Louise Ellman David Simpson Mr Philip Hollobone Mr David Wilshire Witnesses: Mr Roy Wicks, Chair of pteg, <strong>and</strong> Director General, South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive, Mr Neil Scales, Director General, Merseytravel, Passenger Transport Executive Group (pteg); Mr David Cook, Chief Executive, Kettering Borough Council, Mr Adrian Jones, Director of Environment <strong>and</strong> Regeneration, Nottingham County Council, <strong>and</strong> Mr Greg Yates, County Transport <strong>and</strong> Regeneration OYcer, Cheshire County Council, Local Government Association (LGA), gave evidence. Chairman: Good afternoon to you, gentlemen. You are very welcome here this afternoon on the second session of our ticketing inquiry. For those of you who have been here before, you know the ground rules. The microphone in front of you records but does not project, so I am going to ask for a little voice, <strong>and</strong> I am going to ask if you would be indulgent for a moment because we have a little bit of housekeeping to perform. Mr Martlew, any interests to declare? Mr Martlew: A Member of Unite <strong>and</strong> the GMB Trade Union. Clive EVord: A Member of Unite. Chairman: A Member of ASLEF. Mrs Ellman: A Member of Unite. Mr Hollobone: One of our distinguished witnesses, Chairman, is the Chief Executive of Kettering Borough Council, of which I am very proud to be a member. Q159 Chairman: Gentlemen, beginning on my left <strong>and</strong> your right, would you like to identify yourselves for the record? Mr Yates: Greg Yates, County Manager of Transport <strong>and</strong> Regeneration, Cheshire County Council. Mr Jones: Adrian Jones. I am the Director of Planning <strong>and</strong> Transport in Nottingham City Council, which is a unitary authority. Mr Cook: Good afternoon. David Cook, Chief Executive of Kettering Borough Council <strong>and</strong> Chairman of the District Chief Executive Network. Mr Scales: Neil Scales, Director General of Merseytravel <strong>and</strong> Chairman of ITSO, the Integrated Transport Smartcard Organisation. Mr Wicks: Roy Wicks, Director General of South Yorkshire PTE <strong>and</strong> Chair of pteg. Q160 Chairman: You are all coming at this from slightly diVerent angles, but does anybody have anything they want to say before we begin? Mr Yates, are you taking a breath there? Mr Yates: Chairman, I will pass over to Mr Cook. Mr Cook: I think from looking at the terms of reference of the Committee it is clear that you are looking at a number of issues. One of the things I think we are keen to do is answer the Committee’s questions, of course, but the issue of funding would go to the heart of the success of this <strong>and</strong> I think there are three points we have to make constructively about things which have been done which are very helpful on funding <strong>and</strong> three things which perhaps are not quite so helpful, which might be of information to the Committee. Q161 Chairman: And they are? Mr Cook: The three things which are very helpful are that there is funding for smartcards so that local authorities can bring smartcards in, there is a specific grant to pay for the costs of the concessionary travel, <strong>and</strong> the things which are likely to be problematical are whether or not that specific grant is suYcient, whether the distribution of it will be accurate <strong>and</strong> whether or not there are arrangements in place to review the suYciency of it swiftly, which we think would be necessary. Q162 Chairman: Are you suggesting the Government does not have a policy on integrated ticketing? Mr Cook: No, Chairman, I am not suggesting the Government does not have a policy on integrated ticketing. I am talking specifically about the funding of concessionary travel. Q163 Chairman: Yes, we will come to that, Mr Cook, but what do you think is the Government’s policy on integrated ticketing? Mr Cook: Chairman, if I may, my colleagues have probably got more lineage <strong>and</strong> credibility in those areas than myself. Mr Jones: I think, Chairman, outside London there is not a very credible or eVective policy on integrated ticketing <strong>and</strong> it is a fairly major problem for a city like Nottingham. Q164 Chairman: Whose fault is that? Mr Jones: I think it lies in the legislation which underpins the whole structure of the bus industry at the present time. Q165 Chairman: Mr Yates, is that your view? Mr Yates: It is my view as well, Chairman. Q166 Chairman: Is there anything else you wanted to add to that?
Transport Committee: Evidence Ev 21 5 December 2007 Mr Roy Wicks, Mr Neil Scales, Mr David Cook, Mr Adrian Jones <strong>and</strong> Mr Greg Yates Mr Yates: I think the achievements we have made in Cheshire have been done with the assistance from the Department, but we have only gone partly along the road of being able to get a fully integrated ticketing system in Cheshire <strong>and</strong> it is almost as if it has been a very uphill struggle, despite the assistance we had from the Department. Q167 Chairman: You do not think the Government is doing enough to help you develop an integrated system, is that what you mean? Mr Yates: Yes, I do. We have had some help, but it has not gone far enough in terms of getting the system spread across the whole totality of the bus provision within Cheshire. We have got about 60% of the way <strong>and</strong> I gather we are well ahead of other areas in the country. Q168 Chairman: Is there a national scheme for integrated ticketing? I am not talking about the st<strong>and</strong>ards for ITSO, but is there actually an integrated scheme throughout the whole of the United Kingdom? Mr Wicks: No, Chairman. I think, as my colleagues have said, the issue for us really, particularly in the larger cities, is that even if you can achieve some degree of integration within one bus company, the problem we have is that we have buses <strong>and</strong> trams <strong>and</strong> we are trying to operate a simple single ticket for people. We do that <strong>and</strong> all of the PTEs oVer such a ticket. The diYculty we have is that because it has to be commercially negotiated the pricing of that ticket has to be a suYcient distance in practical terms from the operator’s own tickets. So in relation to oVering an integrated product—which you can get in most of our cities which allows you to travel anywhere by bus, tram or train, or in my colleague Mr Scales’s case even by ferry, I suspect—it is actually can you price that ticket suYciently attractive for people to take it up? Q169 Mrs Ellman: How important are smartcards? Could not improvements be made by improving the existing paper systems? Mr Wicks: Certainly—if I could start on that <strong>and</strong> ask Mr Scales to come in—we think smartcards are very important. You only have to see the success of the Oyster card in London in encouraging people to make more trips by diVerent modes of transport. The Government is funding a pilot of smartcard ticketing in SheYeld, which will get underway in March, but I would not want to underestimate the diYculties there are, compared with London, in actually introducing such a scheme. In London, TfL can take the revenue risk in eVect <strong>and</strong> the consequences of that. We have had to negotiate with all the bus <strong>and</strong> train operators to make sure they are comfortable with the processes that you put in place behind it. So, yes, smartcard is an important way of getting people a good ticketing oVer, but there are a lot of practical implications behind that to do with the commercial deregulated market outside London. Mr Scales: Yes, they are easy to use. They are very convenient for passengers because they are contactless so you do not have to push them into a slot on a vehicle or on a platform. Therefore, you get reduced fraud; you get better data sets for planning public transport going forward. As my colleague Mr Wicks said, there is another pilot on the way now <strong>and</strong> our colleagues in Scotl<strong>and</strong> are already rolling out more than a million ITSO-compliant smartcards. ITSO itself provides a framework, which is Crown copyright, so it is open to everybody, <strong>and</strong> that will allow diVerent manufacturers to bid for smartcard projects. I think the English national concessionary travel scheme with potentially 11 million cards in Engl<strong>and</strong> being introduced on 1 April provides a good base for the smartcards, a suYcient volume for other applications to get noticed, things like banking applications, as is happening here with Oyster, but you can extend them into local authority uses such as library cards, access to schools. There are lots of applications, so we think smartcards are definitely a step in the right direction <strong>and</strong> ITSO provides an interoperable framework which will help that. Q170 Mrs Ellman: Would that apply equally to the non-metropolitan areas? Mr Scales: Yes, indeed. There are 291 issuing authorities in Engl<strong>and</strong>, all of which have the operability to go for a smartcard-type solution, maybe not now but in the future, <strong>and</strong> with support from Government <strong>and</strong> our colleagues in the Department for Transport we have set up ITSO Services Limited, which will capture all the data on the non-smart operations <strong>and</strong> when they go smart then they get all the data sets back. So we have taken adequate <strong>and</strong> suYcient precautions to protect the data until they go into a smartcard solution. Mr Jones: In Nottingham we have actually got the highest take-up of smartcards outside London per head, but we have got a problem in that there are three separate smartcard systems which are not compatible. Q171 Chairman: Is that because they are not part of ITSO? Mr Jones: That is correct. Mr Scales: They are Legacy systems, Chairman. Mr Jones: Yes, so actually getting the operators to agree to a common smartcard is really fundamental to moving forward with integrated ticketing <strong>and</strong> that is extremely hard to do, sometimes for commercial reasons <strong>and</strong> sometimes because it is a way of actually preventing the requirement for integration if you have not got a smartcard system. There are integrated tickets at the moment in Nottingham which is quite successful—it is actually a paper scratch card—even though we have got a very high number of people with smartcards. Q172 Mrs Ellman: Mr Wicks, in your evidence you say that some of the commercial operators have questioned the commercial benefits of smartcards, some of the private operators. Why would that be?
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House of Commons Transport Committe
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Contents Report Page 1 Introduction
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4 5. Smartcards offer a range of ne
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6 Integrated bus ticketing 10. Thro
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Page 13 and 14: 12 long-distance rail passengers ma
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Page 17 and 18: 16 Oyster on rail services in Londo
Page 19 and 20: 18 4 Revenue protection and
Page 21 and 22: 20 Staff safety 61. Transport staff
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Page 27 and 28: 26 concession authorities that attr
Page 29 and 30: 28 operators and a
Page 31 and 32: 30 List of recommendations Integrat
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Page 35 and 36: 34 Formal Minutes Clive Efford Mrs
Page 37 and 38: 36 List of written evidence 1 Dr Ro
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Page 41 and 42: Oral evidence Taken before the Tran
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Is the legal framework within which
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The Use of Smartcard Technologies I
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