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

Ev 46 Transport Committee: Evidence
12 December 2007 Mr Stephen Joseph, Mr Anthony Smith, Mr Rufus Barnes <strong>and</strong> Mr Gordon Edwards
Q390 Clive EVord: What is your underst<strong>and</strong>ing of
the conflict between the technology involved behind
ITSO <strong>and</strong> Oyster?
Mr Barnes: Oyster has been developed by a
company, as Mr Smith has said, <strong>and</strong> is basically a
monopoly product, monopoly supply, monopoly
cost, et cetera. The interface of the ITSO product I
am told is extremely diYcult in respect of the pay as
you go element of the stored value ticket. As you
know Oyster is a double product, on the one h<strong>and</strong> it
can be a period ticket, on the other h<strong>and</strong> it can be a
stored value ticket. It is the stored value element
where there is a problem on the interface <strong>and</strong> I
believe, although I am not a technical expert, that
the problem is having the information stored on the
ITSO product that can be read by the Oyster
machinery in respect of pay as you go. I believe that
is where the problem lies.
Q391 Clive EVord: Are you aware of an internet
ticket sales line that claims it can provide an ITSO
type smartcard that will work on the current Oyster
systems without requiring any new gates or readers?
Mr Barnes: I am not personally aware of the detail
of that; I have heard of the company that is making
that claim but I do not know the details.
Q392 Clive EVord: Are you aware of the current rail
legislation that allows train operators to stop sales of
certain promotional tickets <strong>and</strong> that this is likely to
increase under smartcards?
Mr Barnes: Certainly the rail companies can sell
promotional tickets as much as they wish to. They
have to sell a particular core range of tickets but
above that they can sell any tickets that they believe
are in their commercial interests.
Q393 Clive EVord: This question is about something
more than that, it is actually blocking the sale of
other sorts of tickets that might be in a passenger’s
interest but not in the train operator’s commercial
interest.
Mr Smith: I am aware of this because I would have
thought it would still have been in the train
operator’s interest to sell products which are specific
to perhaps just that train company, whether it is
Virgin or South West Trains or whatever. You are
quite correct in your analysis that that benefits
consumers because you have a degree of choice.
Mr Barnes: What I suspect it may not be feasible to
do is to sell it through the Oyster product or through
the ITSO product because the benefit that the
companies have from their promotional tickets is
that they are usually only sold by that company <strong>and</strong>
they get all the money for it. When you go down the
route of an Oyster product or an ITSO product it is
a shared value <strong>and</strong> they have to share the money that
they get in. I suspect what you are alluding to is that
if a company wished to sell a promotional product it
would still have to be outside the ITSO/Oyster
product.
Q394 Clive EVord: What is the future for the
travelling public? At the moment if you start your
journey on a bus you cannot buy your train ticket,
what would solve this through-ticketing problem for
the public? What do you envisage?
Mr Barnes: We would definitely advocate wider
sales opportunities for multi-model tickets <strong>and</strong>
perhaps this is the right point to draw your attention
to a further potential problem with the ITSO/Oyster
product because it has to do with ticket sales. Again
South West Trains, under its agreement with the
Department for Transport, will, we underst<strong>and</strong>, be
accepting the Oyster pay as you go product but it
does not intend to sell the Oyster pay as you go
product; it only intends to sell the ITSO product.
Other train operating companies in the London area
have said that they will both sell <strong>and</strong> accept it so in
the South West Trains area—<strong>and</strong> maybe elsewhere,
I do not know—passengers who wish to top up their
Oyster pay as you go product will not be able to do
it at their local South West Trains station, they will
have to go to another ticket sales outlet. We think
this confusion is absolutely awful <strong>and</strong> perhaps a
further indication of lack of integration <strong>and</strong>
ticketing policy.
Q395 Clive EVord: Can I just clarify that they are
actually saying they will not allow TfL to put their
machines on their station forecourts so that Oyster
card users can top up their cards?
Mr Barnes: I think the problem is that South West
Trains would have to invest in the cost of that
product.
Q396 Clive EVord: What if TfL suggested that they
put the machines there themselves?
Mr Barnes: They would be very happy to accept
anything free.
Mr Edwards: Could I just make the point that from
the first of April next year all concessionary pass
holders in Engl<strong>and</strong> are going to be issued with an
ITSO smartcard for their concessionary fare travel.
This is a major investment by the Government but
they will be of no use getting on a bus in London
because they will not be able to operate the Oyster
machines there so they will be taken as paper tickets.
There really needs to be something joined-up here.
Mr Smith: I think trying to guess the future is always
a bit dangerous but we did ask passengers what they
thought the future as being <strong>and</strong> funnily enough it
does not look that diVerent from where we are now,
which is quite reassuring. People see the smartcard
as being the key where you can use a smartcard in
diVerent parts of the country, in diVerent urban
areas, a smartcard which has this element of both
stored value <strong>and</strong> pay as you go, but that is not a
replacement for that ability to have staV to talk to,
to have other methods of buying a ticket. I think the
future is smartcards.
Q397 Graham Stringer: Will you tell us what
progress you think there is being made on the
conflict between composition <strong>and</strong> cooperation on
ticketing?