Leicestershire
FIRM plans are now in place for the first phase of Leicestershire ‘going smart and integrated’.
Leicester City Council, which has led on the initiative, can now report that buses will be the first on line. However the councils in the county have exciting plans to make full use of their smartcard system on both the transport and citizen fronts over the next six years.
They are looking at gradually introducing commercial, multi-operator schemes and bringing rail, taxi and bike schemes 
on board. Work is already underway with the new City Centre Bike Park to trial smart ticketing for new bike park members. Membership will be confirmed on smartcards, allowing access to the bike park and its services.
The Council is also looking at using the smartcards for multiple applications in universities door access, libraries, small purchases in the union and term time travel passes), for council services such as libraries and leisure centres, and even as e-purses (electronic pay as you go) for use of things like the council scheme where you can have your bike serviced.
A wider retail network for the e-purse will also be explored to include local businesses such as cafes.
Leicestershire is one of nine major urban areas sharing Department for Transport (DfT) funding to support smart ticketing over the past two years.
The DfT approved the use of a clawback from the bus operators to allow the Councils to fund the purchase of ticketing machines. Eighty per cent of the capital cost of the machines will be paid back to the scheme over six years from the Bus Service Operator Grant (BSOG) uplift that can be accessed by going smart. This arrangement will secure the continuation of the project once the DfT funding ends.
ACT have been appointed to provide the back office IT processing system and expect it to go live this month (June).
Leicestershire is working with five bus operators: Arriva, Centrebus, First, Kinch and Thurmaston, running around 500 buses in total with current passenger journey numbers of around 50 million a year. All have plans in place to buy upgraded electronic ticketing machines. Arriva expects to be the first to go live by July and others will follow, with completion expected by the end of this year.
Leicestershire currently has a paper flexi ticket system which allows passengers to travel on any bus, for unlimited journeys for £4 a day. It is not widely used, however there is an intention to see if this can be expanded through going smart.
Market research undertaken as part of the smart ticketing scheme has shown that more than 20 per cent of bus customers regularly use more than one bus company to travel.
The eligible elderly, disabled and unemployed people in Leicestershire already have ITSO-compliant smartcard concessionary passes which were introduced as part of the national rollout.
Operators are looking to attract more passengers through a more efficient service which allows more accurate timetabling and shorter running times through decreased boarding times enabled by the use of smartcards.
9 June 2011
