To increase the use of public transport, cities should aim at making the ticketing system attractive and easy to understand for everyone. The pricing system should be coherent and simple with a reasonable number of tickets that takes users’ needs into account.
The basis for fares should be transparent and easy to understand. Tickets and payment facilities should be widely available, as well as the sales points distributed throughout the city, ticket vending machines at various places (“park & ride” stations, main bus stops or in vehicles), on the internet (subscription for smart card holders) and via mobile phones.
Integrated ticketing and tariff policies between different public transport operators (local public transport and the national railway) should be offered to make tickets valid for all public transport modes and for a whole region. Easy and attractive payment methods should be offered. Innovative smart card systems can be implemented, which can be used for contactless payment of integrated fares. They may also serve as an important element of marketing public transport. Smart payments also can provide valuable data on behaviour and mobility patterns of users.
Many potential benefits from public transport ticketing measures were explored during CIVITAS II, a project which benefits from the support of the European Union.
The ease and convenience of purchase afforded by innovative ticketing systems in a city should attract more public transport passengers, resulting in less private cars entering the urban area. The accessibility of public transport in general is enhanced with the introduction of a ticket valid for all types of services and vehicles.
Nevertheless, a major disadvantage is that ticketing integration on long-distance passenger transport services is a complex issue, as a study elaborated in 2012 by the European Parliament, the Department of Internal Affairs, shows.
Its feasibility encounters a number of legislative, technical and competition-related obstacles resulting from the differences between the many transport environments that have to be combined. Integrated ticketing is not an objective per se: it is rather a means of making multi-modal transport more attractive for users and of promoting more efficient use of existing infrastructure and services.
Only limited statistics are available on long-distance intermodal travel and there is no common definition across Europe of long-distance trips. This makes it difficult to provide a precise overview of the main characteristics and size of the long-distance market. Nevertheless, it can be said with absolute certainty that long-distance integrated ticketing remains a limited phenomenon, restricted to certain niche markets.
However, stakeholders suggest that, even though it may be difficult to estimate, the potential for such a market does exist and may grow in the longer term.
The study shows that as far as the long-distance market segment is concerned, progress has been slow and no significant advances have been made. Rail-rail integration remains weak, as evidenced by the limited number of instances found by this study. Policy measures in this area have essentially focused on improvements in technical interoperability among domestic networks, while less attention has been paid to the integration of booking and ticketing schemes for trips involving more than one operator.
According to a Eurobarometer survey published in December 2013, 58% of Europeans are satisfied with rail services in their country. However, comparatively few Europeans travel by train. In some countries, the number of users who consider it overly complicated to buy tickets is worryingly high. The overall level of satisfaction with the ease of buying tickets has not improved since 2011 (78% satisfaction) with however big improvements in Austria and Greece (14 and 10 percentage points increase respectively). However, there have been worrying increases in dissatisfaction in Italy, Denmark and Slovenia (all more than 10 percentage points).
Photo: ec.europa.eu
[ by Elena Ilie ]Share on:
