If the ticket is a success (both in number of tickets sold and in people taking transit instead of the car) I'd expect the program to be continued. The exact implementation will be subject to much debate, but once you have a cheap monthly nationwide ticket established it's much easier to talk about the costs and benefits of actually charging for it.
I suppose you could let people buy monthly tickets the same way they do for public transit, and handle the rest the same way automated ticketing of speeding is handled.
Seems plausibly easy enough to solve at least partly with some technology. The article states that tourists and non-residents still need to pay, so I guess they still have a ticketing system. Just issue yearly cards to eligible citizens and use that to track ridership
it's not that simple, there is of course the question of who is paying for this, since the respective transportation businesses do expect to be reimbursed. but, regional tickets that are valid in all transport businesses in an area already exist everywhere, so the technicalities of working out how to count and reimburse different businesses has already been worked out, and expanding this to an additional nationwide ticket is a small change.
this is a very different approach and culture to for example japan where lots of independent companies providing transport exist, but as far as i can tell no collective ticket, but pay as you go everywhere.
This is a great idea in general. Yeah for cost savings for sure but the convenience of actually only having to deal with 1 ticket system around the entire country is a game changer.
This is quite a good solution. It reminds me of public transport in some European countries. Yes, you can get on board without a ticket. But there will be a guard who will be on board maybe 1 in 10 times and the fines are substantial.
The problem is you can't really issue substantial fines in this instance. I suppose you could pay less for the first few runs where verification is more likely.
I really want this to succeed, and I think these problems can be overcome.
This is an amazing idea. Wish it would find widespread (global) use.
(Although this would potentially lead to a completely subsidized transport system... but then you could increase the barrier to getting the free ticket or have the barrier depend on the person's physical fitness... and you might get the cost for the tickets back from the decrease in healthcare costs... it's just got so much potential!)
It’s a fantastic step forward, making commuting with public transport much more affordable for many. But another nice thing about the 9€ ticket was that it got rid of all other tickets for occasional users, too. If you’re using public transport just a few times each month, 49€ is too high, and you will still have to deal with 4x tickets short tickets, AB/BC/ABC zones, day tickets and whatnot. Which is unfortunate, as that’s annoying, and they have to keep the complicated ticket vending infrastructure in place as well.
The possibility to go long distance on trains meant for commuters is an unfortunate side effect of the ticket, more tolerated than intended.
The big improvement is that the ticket you buy for your home town now also works in cities you visit, no more figuring out a different byzantine price model each time you book a hotel.
Imagine vehicle tax would only permit to drive on the roads of your home town and going elsewhere would require you to register locally. Until yesterday, that was exactly how public transit worked.
In Finland we got a law couple of years ago that forces public transportation companies to open up ticketing APIs for ”transportation as a service” providers. I think this is a step to right direction.
It's the equivalent of the basic ticket in each city so guests, children, bike, dog, etc. will all vary based on whatever that offering is. Regardless it guarantees the purchaser transit. It's still massively simpler than actually buying a ticket in each city.
That is amazingly good news! The small payments for tickets in many places in the eu are already barely covering the cost of the transport. Just get rid of this bureaucratic process and go for a flat and easy approach to ticketing.
I would imagine this is coin payments only. Most people probably used transit passes. So coin payments would be a small fraction of the overall revenue.
> 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.
I'd say "easy" is an overstatement. You have to install an app and master their weird terminology (to get a reasonable price you buy a "carnet" of 10 tickets).
And of course it still only works with Android.
Easy would be following what's being done in major transit systems all over the world: Let people immediately pay for rides without installing or thinking about anything, by tapping their phone on the turnstile. And for a bonus, adopt TfL's fare capping so people don't have to try to game the various discount options.
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.
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