Digitalisation: The game changer for public transport

Digital transformation is at the heart of what Ticketer does, continuously helping to bring innovation and smarter ways of operating to the public transport industry. In fact, Ticketer is now the UK’s most widely deployed smart ticketing systems supplier, with Electronic Ticketing Machines (ETMs) on buses throughout the UK. And it’s not just on buses, there are Ticketer software solutions and devices on every form of public transport, including trams, trains, hovercraft, and even horse trams. Ticketer’s ETMs are much more than your standard ticketing device and accept multiple payment options including contactless ticketing, QR codes, smartcards and cash. The evolutions of the ETMs are the award-winning Ticketer Handheld ticketing devices and pole-mounted Tap Off Readers, which enables frictionless bus travel with one simple tap-out using a contactless card. Great for passengers, but also great for the bus operators who reduce dwell times at bus stops and avoid potential delays and loss of income, as well as providing access to a new level of passenger data and information.

Ticketer is not just in the business of hardware. Ticketer develops solutions where hardware is of course an enabler, but at the centre of Ticketer’s core offering sits impressive software that brings it all to life. Continuous product development is what sets Ticketer apart, by bringing new updates and improvements to all bus operators, no matter their size.

Innovations

Jason Mann, UK Head of Product at Ticketer, explains how Ticketer’s innovations make life as simple as possible for bus operators and passengers alike, both during and after covid:

“We were disrupted so much in our day-to-day lives during 2020. From plummeting passenger numbers to meetings taking place over video conferencing, every aspect of life as we knew it changed. But we are proud to say that one thing did remain constant, and that was the regular and continual upgrades we provided for our customers to ensure they still had access to the latest technology in the market. Not only that, but even with a skeleton crew, we were able to re-prioritise product development to work on new features that would help our industry cope with the massive impact that Covid was having on public transport.”

John Clarfelt, Ticketer’s Founder, shares his views on how Covid encouraged innovations quicker than ever before, benefitting bus operators across the country:

“In terms of Covid, it just it was not only challenging for the for the country, it was also challenging for our bus operators. We were doing daily figures for the government of patronage, and I remember one day it was down to 12% of what it had been prior to Covid. Operators did their bit in terms of cleaning and so on and we did our bit, by providing the figures and checking mileages for operators to ensure that their government funding was properly paid. We’ve seen patronage come back to about 90% now which is great. The benefit of Covid, if there was one, is that it helped innovation across the board, but especially in the in the public transport sector because you had to innovate to stay alive.”

Digitalisation has been changing and transforming the ecosystem of mobility in the last decade and it’s going to continue to do that. If you look at the amount of information and data that is generated every day, authorities and operators can understand much better the demands that they have, and the passengers that they serve. There’s lots of opportunity deriving from this level of data capture and one that enables the greatest opportunity that public transport must finally win the race against the car.

Unlocking big data

Andy Monshaw, Group Chief Executive Officer at Ticketer Group, tells us about the importance of unlocking big data to answer business questions:

“The term big data is very commonly used across many sectors, and still really under levered in this industry. We are taking an approach to unlock this opportunity. Today, when you want to look at your data captured and analysed, it’s a very small subsection of data that you can have access to. Tomorrow, you will be able to see all your historical data, and more importantly, there’ll be a set of very sophisticated business analytics in front of it. We will answer for you many, many of the questions we’ve heard over the years and will serve them up to customers in a very simple way for them to consume.”

Ticketer has brought an impressive range of new innovations to market since the onset of Covid and is committed to continue bringing the very best technological advances to the public transport industry, helping to future-proof operations and improve services for passengers.