Integrating ferry transport into smart ticketing

Transport authorities are increasingly looking to integrate ferry travel into the mix of public transport. David Crawford finds out more.

The new A$370m (US$398m) Opal public transport smartcard system being installed by the 378 Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS)-led Pearl consortium in Sydney is geographically the largest in the world to date.

The consortium includes the Commonwealth Bank of Australia; Australian retail payment system provider ePay; Australian infrastructure engineering company 7203 Downer Group; and global on-vehicle fare payment equipment supplier 251 Parkeon.

Since December 2012, the scheme, for the Government of the Australian state of New South Wales, has been having its first trials on the Neutral Bay route of Sydney Ferries.

State agency Transport for NSW claims that the system – cover­ing the 40,000km2 greater Sydney area – will deliver the world’s most technologically advanced transit smartcard.

It has started with ferries as a means of fine-tuning because, says Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian,“in comparison with Sydney’s trains and buses, they have a simpler and less extensive network. That makes it easier to introduce the system and trial the new tech­nology and passenger interactions. The best way to introduce a large and complex system is to do it gradually and encourage feedback”.

CTS president Steve Shewmaker adds: “The ferry trials were an important landmark which showed the project was progressing on time and on budget.”

For the Neutral Bay trial, adult fares (the only ones initially avail­able) have been set at the equivalent to a single fare in the Sydney MyZone scheme. Introduced in 2010 to simplify the city's previously complex fare system (from five ferry zones to two), it has removed one stumbling block to ticketing integration and smart payment.

The system deploys an off-board approach, with passengers using on-shore validators to tag on and off. By 2015, it will be operating on 42 ferry wharves, as well as over more than 300 railway stations, 5000 buses and light rail.

The rollout follows the July 2012 inauguration of a new operator, Harbour City Ferries, with a brief to improve passenger services – the smartcard system playing a central role in this. Transport NSW is committed to increasing ferry usage, having restored a number of links that had previously been scrapped, and is keeping open the op­tion of introducing near field communications (NFC)-based payment in future.

Other projects

For consortium member Parkeon, the contract follows on from its 4291 Transperth scheme in Western Australia, where ferries are consid­ered as an extension to the bus network.

The company has fitted smart bus-type electronic ticketing equipment onto every ferry, with support for the established SmartRider card which now enjoys one of the highest take-ups worldwide on a per capita basis.
In Finland, Parkeon – in conjunction with Tieto Finland – is im­plementing a €60m (US$81m) smartcard-based ticketing and infor­mation contract awarded in 2012 by the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority (HSL). The off-board solution is again being adopted for waterborne transit.  

Full integration of payment for ferries is, however, not always straightforward, as with the US Pacific Coast-based Washington State Ferries (WSF) passenger and vehicle automobile ferry service.

Owned and operated by the Washington State Department of Trans­portation, this has the largest fleet in the US with 20 terminals and segregates its users into upper deck (foot passengers) and lower deck (vehicles), providing a key commuter link for the city of Seattle.

Its Wave2Go core system allows integration with the regional multimodal ORCA (One Regional Card for All) scheme to meet the needs of its walk-on passengers, who can load a WSF monthly pass or e-purse and an accompanying transit pass. But it has been un­able to participate in the ORCA transit partners’ monthly Puget Pass system, covering the Puget Sound area, because of fare differentials.

(Vehicles use Wave2Go on the ferries which are considered as part of the Department of Transportation highway system, making the lower deck equivalent to part of a toll road).

Island issues

Domestic ferry routes can range in length between short river or bay commuter crossings and vital links of 100km or more joining mainlands to outlying island com­munities across open sea.

In October 2012, the UK’s devolved Scottish Government launched its plan for a nationwide Saltire (the country’s heraldic cross) smartcard for use on all public trans­port modes – including ferries serving the country’s 95 inhabited islands. Sea links are crucial for their resident populations and summer tourists, and the government sees introducing easier payment for them as important for maintaining and increasing visitor numbers.
 
National agency 505 Transport Scotland al­ready runs the country’s bus concessionary travel scheme on a smart platform and has funded the installation of 7000 enabled ticket ma­chines across the national fleet. All are compliant with the UK’s ITSO specification for interoperable fare payment using smart media.

Bringing ferries in is the logical next step, and Transport Scotland is engaging with the industry on a framework for progressing its in­clusion, including trial sites and routes. But there are problems, which also are relevant to other countries that are, or contain, archipelagos.
One is that the marine environment is a very harsh climatic one for using advanced fare payment equipment in, which therefore needs to be robust, as well as wind and waterproof. Another is the challenge of providing and maintaining suitably reliable and cost-effective data links from this equipment to land-based back-office systems.

The Scottish Government has noted the results of earlier trials suggesting that previously-available ITSO-compliant equipment de­signed for buses did not work well at sea. One regional authority, the Orkney Islands Council, has already implemented a basic smartcard operation on some of its inter-island services – but this is not ITSO-compliant and is therefore non-interoperable with island bus services.

Transport Scotland is therefore looking for methods of using exist­ing equipment in ways that suit both passengers and ferry operators, without prejudicing revenue collection and validation. In response, Orkney has committed itself to a programme aimed at migrating the existing opera­tion onto an ITSO-compliant platform; and trialling new products in conjunc­tion with bus operator Stagecoach.

Meanwhile, on the mainland, the 2050 Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT), which covers Scotland’s largest conurbation, centred on Glasgow, is running a trial on the local Kilcreggan-Gourock Ferry in the Firth (estuary) of Clyde, which has a 15-minute crossing time. It is using ITSO-compatible Para­gon remote system download software from Scottish company 6366 Ecebs, which has entered into the Nevis Technolo­gies joint venture with SPT.

The software is being made available in a portable ‘ITSO in a box’ version. This provides a base station enabling tickets to be bought online or on-board and loaded onto smartcards, smartphones or NFC-enabled devices.

On board is a portable Nautiz eTicketPro terminal from Swed­ish company 6277 Handheld Europe, ruggedised to cope with marine environments and equipped with corresponding software. The ferry operator can use this both to validate advance purchases, and sell and validate electronic tickets on-board. It communicates with the base station via Wi-Fi.

The system is designed for compatibility with other public trans­port modes and the Scottish concessionary scheme, enabling seam­less transfer from a ferry onward to bus, rail and subway (Glasgow metro) connections.