Stagecoach has announced it will deliver contactless bus travel on all of its regional bus services across the UK by the end of 2018.
The £12million initiative will allow passengers to pay for their travel with a contactless credit or debit card, as well as Apple Pay and Android Pay.
It will be the first major deployment of contactless technology on Britain's buses outside London and will benefit customers from major urban areas to rural and island communities such as Norfolk in England, Orkney in Scotland and Brecon in Wales.
Stagecoach launched the first stage of the major project with contactless now live on all of Stagecoach's 180 buses in Oxfordshire. It covers Oxford City services, commuter routes into Oxford and Oxford Tube express services which run to and from London 24 hours a day.
The facility will be rolled out to Ashford in Kent and Tyne and Wear by the end of this year with Greater Manchester following in January 2017, covering a further 1,300 buses and benefitting hundreds of thousands of bus passengers. By the end of 2018, the state-of-the-art technology will be live on all of Stagecoach's 7,200 buses in England, Scotland and Wales - equivalent to nearly one in four buses outside London.
Stagecoach has already ordered 4,000 special ticket machines, covering more than 50% of its bus fleet, with the remaining 3,200 machines scheduled for 2017-18. There will be no additional charge to customers for using contactless as a means of payment.
The move comes just weeks after Stagecoach launched a new smartphone app providing customers with simple journey planning, next-stop information and live bus tracking. Mobile phone ticketing is being rolled out across the UK over the next three months, with the facility already live in Greater Manchester.
Robert Montgomery, Managing Director of Stagecoach UK Bus, said: "Bus travel is experiencing a complete transformation. Major investment by Stagecoach in new digital technology is making it easier than ever to catch the bus. From contactless technology and new apps to greener vehicles with the latest environmental performance, buses are the simpler, smarter and greener mobility solution. But to maximise the benefit of this investment, we also need bold and urgent action by transport authorities to tackle the scourge of road congestion that is holding back bus reliability."
Transport Minister Andrew Jones said: “Buses make vital journeys possible every day, and this government is doing everything it can to improve services. The roll-out of contactless payment technology on Stagecoach bus services outside London will help hundreds of thousands of passengers. People will be able to buy tickets online and on smartphones, making bus travel more convenient, cutting queues and speeding up journeys.”
Around 76 million contactless cards are now in issue in the UK – a rise of nearly 40% in the past year. Some £929.8m was spent in the UK in October 2015 alone using a contactless card. Contactless transactions are already accepted on London’s 9,600 buses. Commuters in the capital were responsible for about 1 in 10 of all UK contactless payments in December 2014.
Stagecoach is also working with other major bus operators - First Bus, Go-Ahead, Arriva and National Express - on a major project to have EMV contactless technology installed on every one of the UK’s 32,000-plus buses outside London. The project would cover more than 1,200 bus operators in England, Scotland and Wales, and make contactless travel available for 5.2 billion bus passenger journeys a year across Britain. Associated government legislation would be needed to ensure contactless ticketing was offered by all individual bus operators.
Major operators have already completed the introduction of smart multi-operator bus ticketing in all nine of England's smart city regions with support from local transport authorities. Passengers can travel seamlessly between operators in Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands, South and West Yorkshire, as well as Nottingham, Leicester and Bristol. It is making public transport more accessible in regions which account for around 15 million people - over a quarter of England's population.
A similar project is now underway to deliver the same benefits to Scotland’s major cities. Multi-operator schemes are already live in Aberdeen and Dundee, with Glasgow and Edinburgh set to follow in 2016-17. Looking ahead, the multi-operator system, which uses ITSO technology, also gives a platform to deliver multi-modal travel in partnership with transport authorities.