The Anonymous Widower

What Will Be The Effects Of Cashless Buses?

When London’s buses go cashless on the sixth of July, London and the passengers on its buses, will submit themselves to a big experiment.

But as I said in this post, nearly all of the staff and passengers seem to be strongly in favour.

The average London bus driver isn’t stupid, as what employer would allow an imbecile to have control of any £200,000 machine. The biggest problem they have with cash, other than the security one, is the inevitable delay, when passengers go searching for small change. London buses are timed to the minute and drivers seem not to like to miss their schedule.

I haven’t found any actual data on what passengers think about going cashless, but I have seen or heard no complaints in the media. I have heard the odd moan though, when a bus is delayed by passengers searching for small change. Although, that seems to have happened less since it was announced buses were going cashless and contactless bank cards could be used.

There will obviously be some troubles on the sixth, but I suspect TfL will put a lot of extra staff on the buses to smooth things through.

Remember though that according to Wikipdeia, London’s buses are used by six million riders a day and that every touch-in is registered on TfL’s ticketing system. That will generate an enormous amount of data.

When it has all settled down, just by examining before and after data will give conclusions, that will help with the planning of London’s transport system.

Will going cashless speed the buses?

Will the buses be carrying more or less passengers?

Will we be seeing a new group of passengers using a bus for the first time?

Would visitors to London, use their bank card or an Oyster?

Will we see a long term decline in the use of Oyster on buses?

I will not speculate, but let the data do the talking!

But the biggest effects will be felt, if the scheme works well and increases the revenue and profitability of London’s buses.

How many cities seeing how the London system works, would decide to go to a similar system? Many bus systems like Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow are not very comprehensible to a visitor without a guide, but London’s simple touch-in once with your bank card system, is probably understandable to everybody familiar with a contactless bank card.

I would also see London using the same system on the Underground, Overground and railways within London.

As Oyster now works on train journeys around London and many stations like Cambridge, Watford and Brighton are gated, would we see pressure to allow the Oyster/bankcard ticketing on journeys around the broader South East of England. Yesterday, when I went to Salisbury, I paid £24.60 for my walk-up Off Peak ticket, which was the same price as if I’d bought it earlier in the day on-line. It would have been so much more convenient to have touched-in at Waterloo and touched-out at Salisbury with a contactless bank card. Especially, as I just missed the previous train to Salisbury, so with a contactless bank card ticket, I’d have got there thirty minutes earlier.

So will we see the creeping of Oyster/bank card ticketing out from London? One problem is Railcards, but I’m sure one could be associated with a particular bank card.

Would it increase the resolve of TfL to introduce cashless ticketing all over the Underground, Overground and trains in the London area?

London’s new ticketing regime is going to provide a lot of answers to questions, some of which haven’t even been thought up yet. It is also going to ask a lot of politicians to bury some of their views. A lot of money will have been proven to have been wasted on systems that can never accept contactless bank cards.

June 25, 2014 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Buses, Contactless Ticketing, London