All change please: Your train ticket will never be the same again

Commuters all across England could soon be using mobile phones, bank cards and Oyster-style smart ticketing on their journey home via public transport.

The Department of Transport (DfT) today released a consultation document, inviting comments on the development of its future smart ticketing strategy for public transport in England.

While smart ticketing schemes have sprung up in isolation in a number of towns and cities in the UK, the consultation marks a major step in the creation of a nationwide, electronic ticketing system.

The Department is hoping to introduce integrated ticketing over the next five to 10 years - allowing consumers to purchase a single ticket to travel on any mode of transport across any number of transport operators - an idea it believes can be aided through the introduction of smart ticketing.

Smart ticketing, where a ticket is held on a chip rather than a piece of paper, was popularised in the UK by London's contactless Oyster card scheme, introduced in 2003. The government is now looking at other smart ticketing options, including tickets sent in barcode form to travellers' phones and print-at-home tickets.

The DfT is also considering the promotion of NFC (near field communications) for ticketing. NFC, used in the Oyster card, allows users to tap a card or other device on a reader and pay for a ticket automatically using stored credit or a pre-purchased ticket.

Among the NFC options being examined by the government are NFC bank cards and mobile phones.

NFC bank cards are already in circulation - Barclays expects to have all of its debit cards in circulation equipped with NFC by 2011 - but mobile phones with the functionality are extremely limited in the UK and not widely expected to see mass takeup for some years, if at all.

A recent trial by O2, Barclaycard and Transport for London saw Oyster ticketing functionality added to phones as part of a six-month trial, there is now no rollout likely before 2013.

The Oyster card is England's biggest smart ticketing system (Photo credit: LoopZilla via Flickr.com under the following Creative Commons licence)

The department's consultation remains optimistic however, saying: "NFC phones have the potential to be the dominant smart media for transport."

It also says contactless bank cards have "big advantages" for smart ticketing, including the fact that the contactless functionality they already possess means consumers could use them as a ticketing mechanism without transport operators having to invest in extra ticketing smart cards.

According to the government, introduction of integrated smart ticketing could save the UK billions of pounds in faster journey times and easier purchasing of tickets.

However, while the government may be keen to see the spread of integrated smart ticketing, it doesn't intend to be the financial driving force behind it.

"We do not believe it is a reasonable expectation that the Department will wholly and directly fund all smart ticketing infrastructure and this will not be part of the final strategy," the DfT consultation document reads. It also notes that the department is not expecting to make any regulatory changes to encourage smart ticketing take-up.

Instead, the government is hoping transport operators will fund the necessary infrastructure to make smart ticketing more widespread.

However, the government acknowledges it may be a hard sell: "Some of the benefits of smart ticketing are also not always easy to monetise, which can lead to the suggestion that it is not possible to make a traditional business case for smart ticketing. However, there are benefits to which a value can be attached, such as time savings and fraud reduction."

The consultation paper also floats the idea of extending the smart tickets to make them multifunctional: as well as using them to pay for travel, holders could use them to pay for parking or bicycle hire as well as a library card. Local authorities could also see the cards double up as 'entitlement cards' or 'citizens' cards' - cards used by holders as proof of entitlement to benefits and services.

The smart tickets could also be used in e-money schemes, such as for car clubs, and form part of loyalty or reward schemes.

Should such multifunction cards go ahead, they wouldn't be the first: Nottingham's Citycard and Bracknell Forest's e+ card, for example, act as a ticketing scheme as well as giving access to libraries and leisure centres.

However, an earlier attempt to extend the functionality of the Oyster card into e-money services failed after TfL announced that none of the shortlisted suppliers had been able to meet their criteria and the rollout had been put on hold indefinitely.

Any large scale smart ticketing rollout will mean a substantial infrastructure investment, according to the DfT.

"One of the realities of smart ticketing is that it requires the infrastructure to be fully present to function. This means that a large proportion of the costs of implementing smart ticketing must be met up front and before the benefits begin to be realised…

"The Department's analysis suggests that there are potential benefits of around £2.6bn per year to be realised, with upfront costs of around £1.1bn to implement the infrastructure and costs of around £260m per year in ongoing costs."

The consultation also notes that takeup of smart ticketing has been proceeding more sluggishly than predicted.

"However, while any new technology takes time to mature and there is a delay before widespread take-up, it is fair to say the spread of smart ticketing has been slower than may have been expected. Examining the reasons for this will help inform the future strategy.

"Discussions with stakeholders have suggested that there is no single reason why smart ticketing is not already widespread but a combination of several different factors clustered around a few key themes: technology, costs and benefits, leadership and new products," the consultation says.

The consultation will remain open until 23 October and will inform government strategy expected by the end of the year.