> And you can get a yearly subscription, giving you all-inclusive usage of the services for 1€/day, billed monthly.
This kind of thing is key - make it easy to use transit and lower the marginal cost of doing so. Yearly subscriptions are good. London's approach—unify almost all modes under the same payment system with automatically calculated caps and discounts—also works quite well as you don't have to think about buying passes, individual tickets, etc. Just tap and go and the system takes care of it for you.
Not many places in the US have this level of integration yet. For instance, the NYC Ferry, NYC Subway, LIRR, Metro North, PATH, and regional Amtrak service all use disjoint ticketing methods. It'll slowly get integrated over the next decade, but it greatly increases the mental effort needed to hop on transit. Perhaps the closest in the US is the Bay Area's Clipper Card - they managed to shoehorn over a dozen area agencies onto the same payment method - but it's still not quite as good as something like London's Oyster.
One reason could be to enable novel fare systems, like London has with its Oyster network.
You can travel around (scanning your contactless debit / credit card) without thinking about how much you’re paying, safe in the knowledge that the system caps your daily / weekly spend to predefined limits, essentially making it never more expensive than a daily / weekly travel card would be. The caps are automatically calculated for the zones you travel in.
It’s a very nice experience as a rider. Especially beneficial to visitors who can just scan through the gates as any Londoner would, no ticket purchase required.
As for the rationale to implement such a system — well, it’s ultimately a public service. All revenue generated is reinvested into the network, in London at least. The economic value of a fast, efficient, painless transit system that everyone uses, regardless of class or wealth, most surely outweighs any lost breakage revenue.
London gets this (mostly) right, because there "contactless card" includes Visa/MasterCard/Amex/Maestro credit and debit cards, and smartphones with equivalent contactless payment. The local transport card (Oyster) is only needed for other fares (e.g. child-rate tickets) or season tickets of a month or longer.
Travel from Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports is included in this.
(The only thing they could improve is the signage at Heathrow. They promote the expensive Heathrow Express train, when many people would be better taking an Elizabeth Line train on the same rails — 15 minutes slower and ¼ the price.)
(One more thing, last month they seem to have introduced a £5-£7 cost to get an Oyster card, which seems needlessly extortionate for visitors that do need them. Years ago it was a small deposit, which you could get returned in cash at the machine.)
Not sure I'm a fan. Certainly very interesting and I'm happy to see a significant country run the experiment, it's going to be a useful data point.
But at the end of the day, what does it solve? And what does it leave unsolved?
A single public transport marketplace is of course great, but many countries have those without the 'single ticket' system. For example, in the Netherlands I use one public transport card for bus, train, tram. I don't have a single ticket with one annual price, but I don't have different subscriptions or different cards for different transport methods (e.g. bus vs train), nor for different providers of the same transport method (e.g. two bus companies), it all happens on one card.
So what does it solve? Admissions checking? No, you still need to present your single ticket. The thing it solves is billing, from individual subscriptions or individual tickets, to a single annual payment.
But billing doesn't seem to be that big of a deal in modern systems, and it doesn't seem like it attacks the biggest issue in billing.
For example in the Netherlands I'm simply billed by use. If I go 5x as far, I pay roughly 5x as much. That's all done automatic, once a month. I don't have to load prepaid money on my card, I just use the card and it's billed after at the end of the month. Really no different to a variable-usage mobile phone subscription.
By introducing a single (e.g. average) payment amount per year, you're overcharging everyone who uses less than average, and undercharging power-users. Usage-based billing seems a much more fair approach. And the billing tech isn't all that complex.
Moreover, the fact a substantial number of people will get a single-ticket (e.g. say it's 60% of the users), doesn't change the fact you'll still need to upkeep billing infrastructure for the other 40%. It doesn't allow you to make billing/admissions infrastructure redundant.
It also doesn't allow you to differentiate at all in pricing and operators. I don't think this is a very big issue because I like public (i.e. not private) transport to be very egalitarian. But there's something to be said for allowing differences in quality/convenience etc in public, transport, too. e.g. business workers ride trains in the Netherlands in 1st class and do an hour of work on their laptops in quiet, comfy chairs, and pay extra, such that non-business users can ride cheaper in 2nd class. Having a single ticket removes any room for such differentiation, which can be useful to a point.
Very interested to see the results and I'm happy they're trying, but not convinced yet.
> I can't think of a single U.S. city that does this. They're all exact change only or proprietary ticketing systems
MBTA in Boston had the mTicket app for mobile ticketing and payments for years. I live in Boston and use the app regularly. Can't comment on other cities because when I visit for a short trip I typically don't bother installing apps.
Amtrak and most airlines use mobile boarding passes too. Interestingly enough, on my recent trip to Europe I used the mobile boarding pass in Logan airport just like everyone else. But in Frankfurt when I showed my phone to the agent they looked at me like I was from another planet, probably thinking "stipid americans"
And while we're on the subject of transportation, about 5 years ago I visited a bunch of european countries, including my home country in Europe, and at that time the only way to call a cab was via dialing the local phone number, cash only of course. Funny because on that trip heading to the airport in the States was matter of acouple taps in the Uber app.
The point of the system is that you don't need the transit card anymore, because you're automatically getting the best daily rate by just using the same credit card each time. If you use a monthly or yearly pass presumably you would have to buy that separately in the first place.
I have a flatrate pass for most of the German public transit [1]. The sticker price is 4000 € a year, but my employer pays for it (in lieu of a company car), so I only have to pay income taxes on it, which comes out to about 170 € a month for me. For that price, I can get on any train whenever I want any time I want (except for overnight trains where a reservation is required), and I also get free local transit in over 100 cities, including the one where I live.
Now, since my commute is rather short, I would certainly be cheaper off if I just had a subscription pass for my city's local transit and bought train tickets as needed, but it's such a vast quality-of-life improvement to be able to, for instance, decide on Friday to visit my parents for the weekend without any extra hidden costs.
(Caveat: All of this does not apply right now since I'm not entering any vehicles with other people until my vaccination has taken effect. But I'm still renewing my subscription because I already know the date when that happens.)
I know that that's only one thing, but the other similar-sized line items in my ledger are much more mundane (rent, utilities, insurance, and such).
Wouldn't work because you could complete the same trip via a range of different companies. So to keep track, you'd need to be tapping in/off each train so the operators could charge you accordingly. And then you'd never have an idea of what the price would be, as fares change according to how early you book and how busy the trains are.
I'm not saying it's a good system - it's a very bad one, having it split between so many companies is a mistake. But the London metro is not a good analogy since it is all one company.
Oyster works in 99% of these scenarios. We use it in London for:
Buses - Single Tap / Single Fare
Tube, Light Rail, Tram, High Speed Rail - Tap in and Out
This is either PAYG with fare calculated by zones traveled in or travel cards per zone. Personally I have a zone 2-3 travel card and PAYG credit which gets used when I travel into other zones at a discount.
User education is key as same as Caltrain some stations no not have ticket gates but usually swipe points by entrances.
Maybe there should be a generic oyster card, that should work for all public transportation systems in uk. One physical token, linked to many accounts.
A system that relies on turnstiles is decades behind as well. Best practices in much of Europe use proof of payment and cheap monthly passes relative to single tickets, so most users have monthly passes.
This cuts down on access time, infrastructure cost, fare collection cost, and minimizes marginal cost per trip for users (i.e. zero).
In Germany, they just introduced a monthly 49€ ticket that covers transit (and regional trains) for the whole country.
In London you can use a contactless card (VISA, Amex...) and there are daily, weekly and monthly caps after which you automatically travel free. It's much less painful than having to plan ahead and buy monthly tickets, and I wish it was the same everywhere.
That sums up the complexity better than I ever could, but as a tourist visiting London it was relatively painless to tap my Apple Watch and pay by contactless credit card when I got on and when I got off, as long as you’re travelling through supported stops within the city region. This generally included any routes to and from London airports.
Comparing the process in London to that of, say, Paris, it is night and day better with London’s system. Yes, trips might cost more than a flat rate, but you don’t need to have a special card - contactless payments are charged at the same rates as an Oyster card would get charged, including discounts if you take multiple trips in a day.
Compare to Paris where it’s a flat rate, but you can’t get a normal ticket because your anonymous card is somehow designed only for tourist pricing. Let’s not even bother with how long the lines can be to buy said card. I’ll take a system where you tap on and tap off any day of the week over a flat rate system that doesn’t support easy contactless payment at the same rates as everybody else.
I should clarify though - this only applies to any travel by train that you can do from stations that have contactless to stations that also have contactless. Anywhere else, you’re expected to tap off and pay a normal fare for the rest of your travel to an unsupported station by buying it from a website.
And while it is unusual to have such complexity, I should mention that rail travel between countries often has similar complexity - I bought a ticket once from Copenhagen to Malmo, Sweden, but got on a train operated by a different company and had to buy a second ticket - the trains left at the same time to and from the same stations but from two different operators. The confusing part is that the train ticket I needed to buy wasn’t available from a Denmark regional train travel ticket kiosk, it was timed ticket you had to buy in advance from a website as the train’s origins was in Sweden rather than Denmark. (And the Denmark station didn’t have Swedish kiosks.)
I guess what I’m saying is that trains can make airlines look efficient, at least when it comes to buying and handling tickets. ;-)
Edit: I should also mention if I got any of this wrong, I’m actually from North America and about all I can say in response is “at least you have (express, high speed) trains,” as I look at our preference for highways and buses and how most rail in North America is for cargo...
> Standardizing a fare payment system just does the same for mass transit.
No it doesn't. Japan has a standardized mass transit fare payment system, covering close enough to the entire country, and you can get in on that with a card purchased, and topped up, completely anonymously in cash.
public transit already is subscription model: you buy a ticket for a ride, or the monthly pass. It is even easier to deny you access to some form of public transport already (think subway entry gates, or long distance trains where you cannot really avoid ticket check). All this follows Klaus Schwab vision for the mankind "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy".
And you can pay for ALL public transit in the WHOLE COUNTRY with one card. Meanwhile in the U.S. we struggle to do that even in one city - I'm looking at you, New York!
(Yes I have a MetroCard, which already has the worst form factor among all transit cards in the world, and why I can't pay for LIRR, Metro-North or NJ Transit with it is beyond me)
>> Would make sense for cities to accept each other's monthly transit cards in theory - little loss for the home city, and a nice perk for the pass holder that could increase appeal of that product.
> but anyone with only weekly […] tickets is fine with a contactless credit card
1. The weekly capping always runs Monday to Sunday, so if your stay doesn't align with that, you'll get to pay an additional capping period, in which case buying a weekly travelcard aligned with your stay will likely be cheaper (as long as you know which zones you'll mainly require).
2. Having a travelcard gives you the ability to buy slightly cheaper rail tickets for destinations outside of the TfL zones. Pay-as-you-go doesn't, unless you physically get off the train in order to touch in/out at the boundary.
3. Transit nerds only: Pay-as-you-go is subject to certain maximum journey times. If you'll exceed those by staying to long within the system, you'll be presumed to have forgotten to touch out and will be charged a maximum fare. A travelcard avoids that issue.
The 'normal' system being complex is a bit exaggerated here - if you have to travel one-off via local multi-mode transportation you'd usually just get a regional Deutsche Bahn day ticket which will generally by accepted by local transport companies as well, and I believe various variants of these would also exist for longer-timespan tickets.
Still, that would not be as handy as the mostly unified billing system using NFC cards we have in the Netherlands since the late 2000s, where if you do not have any entitlement valid on a particular mode of transportation, it uses a charge card balance as such.
While this isn't as innovative nowadays as it used to be, it's still notable as it works in the entire country, which, while small, is still not a city-state.
Something I really appreciate in Taiwan is a single card works for all transit. What I found cool in Sydney was metro turnstiles would read contactless credit cards. And I'm shocked and thrilled that the Bay Area consolidated on one system.
The US is pretty split up and doesn't use trains outside the NE corridor, so it's not as useful, but it'd be nice if congress would start work on unifying transit payments across the country over the next decade. Also unifying car toll payments. These balkanized systems are just silly.
This kind of thing is key - make it easy to use transit and lower the marginal cost of doing so. Yearly subscriptions are good. London's approach—unify almost all modes under the same payment system with automatically calculated caps and discounts—also works quite well as you don't have to think about buying passes, individual tickets, etc. Just tap and go and the system takes care of it for you.
Not many places in the US have this level of integration yet. For instance, the NYC Ferry, NYC Subway, LIRR, Metro North, PATH, and regional Amtrak service all use disjoint ticketing methods. It'll slowly get integrated over the next decade, but it greatly increases the mental effort needed to hop on transit. Perhaps the closest in the US is the Bay Area's Clipper Card - they managed to shoehorn over a dozen area agencies onto the same payment method - but it's still not quite as good as something like London's Oyster.
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