£2.2m card system to aid bus passengers

This article is published in today's Leicester Mercury:

£2.2m card system to aid bus passengers

Their existing bus passes have electronic chips which will be activated in late September and from that point they will swipe their cards on scanners in Arriva buses to register their journeys rather than just show their passes to the drivers.

They will ultimately be rolled out to enable people to access all commercial public transport by topping up cash on them.

Council bosses said the scheme was being introduced to make travelling on public transport quicker and easier, as well as cutting the risk of fraud.

The OneCard was officially launched by City Mayor Peter Soulsby and deputy mayor Councillor Rory Palmer yesterday.

Sir Peter said: "The OneCards are absolutely brilliant. I know in London people say they would not want to be without their Oyster Cards.

"I hope people in Leicester will be saying the same of OneCards before too long.

"They will make it easy for people to travel by bus so they won't have to dig around for change in their pockets.

"Initially this will be used by existing concessionary bus passengers.

"However, the potential to expand this technology to enable people to access all sorts of services in enormous."

Longer term there are proposals to extend the uses of the OneCard, which is funded by the Government, to allow access to public libraries, leisure centres, universities and school transport and more.

Leicester Deputy City Mayor, with responsibility for transport, Councillor Rory Palmer, said: "Residents are often frustrated the different bus companies operate their own ticketing systems with little or no integration, so the launch of the OneCard is one step to resolving this.

"Smart ticketing is one way we can get more people using public transport in the city and eventually we will link the card technology with other services as well."

City council OneCard project officer Adele Wearing said swiping the cards would register which journeys were made but not who made them to protect passenger privacy.

She also said lost cards could be quickly deactivated and replaced.

She said: "It will help us prevent fraud where people get fake bus passes made and flash them at our drivers. We know it is a problem in Leicester but we don't know the scale of it."

Arriva spokesman Keith Myatt said: "We are delighted to have been chosen as the first bus operator to run the OneCards. It should make loading passengers much quicker."

Bus passenger Keith Sperrey, 62, from Leicester, said: "It's a good idea but I don't think I'd use the other services more though.

"It's about time. Have you not been on the continent? They've got them all there."

For more information, visit: www.leicester.gov.uk/onecard