Pressure grows for 'smart card' on city public transport network

Some 70 per cent of city routes are operated by First West and North Yorkshire. But the remainder are split between Transdev, Arriva Yorkshire, East Yorkshire Motor Services, York Pullman and smaller operators providing connections to North Yorkshire.

Calls to introduce a cross-city bus ticket date back to November 2007 when York Council gave the go-ahead to explore a scheme similar to the Leeds Metrocard or London Travel-card which would be accepted on all buses.

However, critics have argued it would be easier and cheaper to introduce paper ticket deals involving more than one bus company on travel from different parts of the city to key locations such as York Hospital, Monks Cross and Clifton Moor.

The grander scheme of substituting a plastic smart card for the old-fashioned but cheap paper ticket would increase management costs and other overheads to an estimated 2.7m a year, according to York Council.

All of the bus operators have said they are broadly supportive of the introduction of an integrated ticket. Several, however, questioned whether the council had sufficient evidence to support the cost of introduction.

Bus operators have therefore agreed to work with council officers to conduct a more wide-reaching survey of the commercial bus services in York reaching 80 per cent of the total network.

In addition, a survey of both bus and non-bus users will be conducted through the council's Talkabout citizen's panel to find out what the potential demand for integrated ticketing there might be.

Labour has been campaigning for a number of years for cross-ticketing, and its transport spokeswoman Ruth Potter said further progress needed to be made.

She said: "The best possible solution would be a smart ticketing option, but we recognise that this will be more costly and take longer to implement.

"In the meantime, working on an inter-ticketing option for certain routes that use more than one operator, such as Poppleton to Stamford Bridge, is better than nothing at all.

"But we want to see more pressure put on operators, and most notably First York, to work with the council to deliver this more widely."

A smartcard called Yorcard, developed by South and West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executives, has been successfully trialled in South Yorkshire over bus and rail services, she added.

Such an option is planned to be rolled out across the region in the future, but individual local authorities would still need to negotiate with local operators as to how the necessary technology and a multi-operator bus pass would be implemented.

"There is still a great deal of work to do on smart technology in developing a smartcard solution for York," Coun Potter continued.

"But the work needs to continue with transport operators in preparation for the time when we are in a position to introduce more innovative transport ticketing options for passengers.

"York is unique and will have its own unique challenges in making smart ticketing such as Yorcard a reality."

York's assistant director for city strategy Richard Wood said the main barrier to any form of integrated ticketing was getting the agreement of bus operators, who feared it might damage revenue flows and undermine the viability of certain routes.

"But if introduced correctly... an integrated ticketing product has the potential to grow the overall bus patronage market," he added.