Supplementary memorandum from Merseytravel
(TPT 28A)
As promised, I am responding to various questions
raised by the Committee on 5 December 2007, it was asked what
the percentage of TCAs is who already have smartcards.
Question 32
All TCAs will be issuing new concessionary passes
in the form of ITSO compliant smartcards, (this excludes the London
Boroughs who have been given an exemption by the Department of
Transport until 2010).
There are a number of TCA areas where smartcards
have already been implemented. Some of the Smart card schemes
are, what has been described as legacy schemes, that is those
that are now compliant with and therefore cannot work with the
new concession passes. These have been considered as though they
are not smart in this response, as the new passes will have to
be used as flash passes.
ITSO Services Limited has been set up to look
after those TCAs who do not have an ITSO compliant back office.
The number of TCAs who are expected to or have signed up to this
service, and who are therefore considered to be non-ITSO-smart
is 253.
The remaining TCAs are or will be soon ITSO
compliant and are therefore in process of rolling out ITSO compliant
equipment to their busses. On a percentage basis this probably
accounts for between 5% and 10% of the bus population of England
(depending on what defining you use for buses and for the total
bus market); around 4,500 buses, expected to be equipped by, say,
end 2008. Further take up will depend on how well Government "encourages"
TCAs, and their bus operators, to equip their buses with ITSO
compliant smart card equipment.
With the right encouragement it would be possible
to have all of the country so equipped within five to seven years,
without causing any major skewing of the equipment market.
Question 53
The Chairman asked for a guide to smartcard
types:
There are basically two types of contactless
smartcard. These are "memory" cards and "micro-processor"
cards.
Memory cards do not contain a processor and
are therefore only able to store "data" on them. All
of the intelligence (and security) is put into the [contactless]
smartcard reader. These smartcards come in various sizes. ITSO
has several memory cards in its portfolio of useable card types.
Most, but not all of these, are based on Mifare® technology.
They range is size from about 250 bytes (or characters), of data
up to 4 Kilobytes (around 4,000 characters of data). They are
usually lower cost than micro-processor cards because they only
contain "memory" and do not have any processing capability.
Micro-processor cards are, as their name implies,
equipped with a small processor on them. They can therefore run
"applets" (micro-processor speak for programs) that
enable them to do more than the basic memory cards can. They can
contain more than one application that can be invoked by the card
reader calling the application via an application identifier.
They can be much bigger than memory cards, but typically in contactless
smartcard and transport applications they tend to be around 4
Kilobytes in size. Some of the older types of micro-processor
cards can be quite slow.
ITSO can work with either or the above types
of contactless smart cards. (There are eight defined types of
contactless smartcard media available in the ITSO Specification.)
This is one of the selling points of the ITSO Specification in
that implementers can mix and match card types according to the
needs of the scheme and of the customer. This includes pretty
much every smartcard that is manufactured to the ISO 144443 contactless
smartcard standard.
Question 68
Timings of Oyster and ITSO.
This is actually in my view a red herring!
1. In the first place it is my understanding
that not all transactions within Oyster are done in 200 milliseconds
or less. (Apocryphal evidence suggests that some take nearly a
second).
2. Secondly Oyster is a closed system with
a closed security system. ITSO is interoperable and has therefore
to have a peer reviewed security that is capable of much wider
use. This will inevitably have a small impact on transaction times.
3. Thirdly ITSO has a range of smart cards
(see above) in its stables and some of these are indeed slower
than Oyster, but some are the same platform as Oyster and would
therefore be expected to be of similar speed to Oyster.
4. Fourthly, the Department for Transport's
own research has suggested that a transaction time of anything
up to one second is quite acceptable as users of smartcards tend,
when they touch their smartcards to the reader, to leave the smart
card in the field for anything up to 1 second. This also is quicker
than the time taken for a magnetic ticket to pass through the
magnetic ticket transport (and much more reliable).
5. Fifthly users, so long as they are provided
with a visual or aural "go", signal will actually modify
their behaviour (within reason) so that the pass works. (It is
much less hassle for it to work than to have to "seek assistance".)
This is eminently shown in London where some individual transactions
take much longer than others.
ITSO therefore believes that majoring on transaction
times is obfuscation, when all of the available evidence suggests
that so long as a transaction is properly completed within less
than one second (and ITSO's benchmark is less than 600 milliseconds).
Certainly in London, replacing magnetic tickets with smartcards
would give transaction throughput benefits for everyone. It would
be win-win for both users and for TfL.
Related to Q84
(The Encyclopaedia Britannica of Buses)
The question relates to fraud. Experience has
shown that when a new type of equipment is installed for the first
time in an area revenue tends to increase, with no other changes,
by between 10% and 15%. This then tends to fall away as time goes
on. One possible explanation that has been given is that this
is because a new ticket machine makes everyone "more honest"
until the new machine (and its quirks) become known. This therefore
suggests that underlying general losses to unknown events (such
as customers not paying or overriding etc) is to the order of
10% to 15%.
As was inferred in the written evidence in many
cases the re-imbursement of concessionary fares does not relate
directly to individual journeys but is related to the results
of surveys.
In relation to the previous section (Q83) there
is no requirement for personal data to be written into the card.
This data can all be held securely in the back office, as currently.
The Department for Transport has provided guidance to TCAs on
this in its bulletins.
I trust that this is of assistance to the Committee,
please let me know if you need anything else.
January 2008
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