Transport Ticketing Global 2020

We were at TTGlobal (28-29 Jan 2020) this year for the fifth year running. It was a much bigger event in Kensington Olympia, London, with around 30% more attendees. This blog is a summary of how the two days went for us.

Day 1

The Plenary session had a surprise guest in the form of the Future of Transport Minister, George Freeman. He spoke eloquently about subjects very close to our hearts:

• Seamless end-to-end ticketing
• Integrated PAYG
• Sustainability: he explained that the emissions of the transport sector are expected to double by 2050 unless something radical is done.

I have written before about a shift in government thinking about mobility that seems to be taking place. Let’s hope this signals more of the same and is followed with positive, decisive action.

Our CEO, Neil McEvoy, moderated the plenary panel on ‘the role of ticketing and urban transport policies in delivering MaaS,’ with panellists from:

• Visa
• Mastercard
• Government of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Dallas Areas Rapid Transit, USA
• Uber

It was felt that to meet public policy objectives on congestion, air quality and CO₂ emissions, facilitating multi-modal, door-to-door, everyday journeys would be key. Facilitating journeys outside of a traveller’s home city or region is welcome but won’t meet wider goals alone.

Highlight of the rest of Day 1 included:

• An update on the Future of Oyster from Transport for London. There are still no plans to turn it off, though the uptake of bank cards by the travelling public continues to rise steadily.
• The Masabi presentation about Fare Payments as Service which was the subject of a recent podcast I made with Ben Whitaker.
• Contactless bank card ticketing has come of age. There were lots of presentations about cEMV roll outs. Visa announced that they have solutions to the classic problems with bank cards (they don’t work for the unbanked or family groups). Contact them if you want to learn more.

Day 2

I moderated a panel about the future of ticketing technologies with panellists from:

• Deutsche Bahn, Germany
• GVB, Netherlands
• The Human Chain, UK
• Department for Transport, UK

We made a whistle-stop tour of up and coming technologies relevant to the different actors in the Mobility ecosystem, ranging from big data and augmented reality for Data Providers to Open Banking and distributed ledger technology for Maas Providers.

Other highlights for me from Day 2 included:

• The UK’s Rail Delivery Group’s presentation on developing insight from barcode data, linking tickets sold with tickets scanned to inform revenue protection.
• An update from Transport for the North on their Integrated and Smart Travel activities.
• A presentation by MOTC about the difficulties faced by Qatar which currently is massively dependent on the private car and their plans to address the congestion problems they face.

Exhibition

I spent most of my time in the exhibition hall talking with contacts and vendors. I wish there had been time to attend more of the presentations.

I took the opportunity to record another podcast while at the event. This time with Eric Reese, CEO of ByteMark over from New York.

Awards

Once again, I was delighted to be one of the panel of judges for the awards presented at the Gala Dinner and Awards held at the Science Museum and hosted by comedian Phil Wang. It was decided by the judges to introduce a Highly Commended tier this year within each award category. This is in recognition that the standard or submissions was generally high. So, while Moscow won the Best Smart Ticketing Programme 2020, both of the following were Highly Commended:

• Flowbird Transport Intelligence & Lothian Buses for their smooth role out of contactless payments card acceptance in Edinburgh in time for the Edinburgh Festival dramatic rise in population and bus usage;
• Rail Delivery Group & Cubic Transportation Systems for the delivery of barcode ticketing under budget and achieving collaboration between 19 Train Operating Companies.

Overall, the event was a great success and great fun to be part of. Here’s to next year.

At Consult Hyperion we have experience globally with transport and mobile ticketing and deploying the latest technologies. If you would like to learn more, give us a call.