CONTACTLESS TICKETING: STATE-OF-THE-ART AND USER IMPACT

Contactless fare collection is believed to substantially change the transport industry's approach to fare collection and to improve the level of service for public transport. This paper describes the application of the contactless smartcard technology for transport ticketing purposes. The analysis focuses on the characteristics of a group of existing applications and of the proposed Swiss EasyRide concept. A case-study analysis is developed on the latter to assess the magnitude and the type of the changes that this new technology will imply for the users, taking into account the demand segmentation by ticket type that exists before the introduction of a contactless ticketing system.