Integrated ticketing allows a person to make a journey that involves transfers within or between different transport modes with a single ticket that is valid for the complete journey, modes being

buses A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for ...

trains In rail transport, a train (from Old French , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives (often k ...

, subways,

ferries A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...

, etc. The purpose of integrated ticketing is to encourage people to use public transport by simplifying switching between transport modes and by increasing the efficiency of the services. In most cases, integrated ticketing is made possible by

electronic ticket An electronic ticket is a method of ticket entry, processing, and marketing for companies in the airline, railways and other transport and entertainment industries. Airline ticket E-tickets in the airline industry were devised in about 1994, an ...

ing technologies such as magnetic stripe cards or

smart cards A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...

. Some smart card systems are also used for paying for goods and other services such as the Octopus card. Some public transport systems also use paper cash tickets that allow transfers within a specified area, and in some cases (such as the

Transperth Transperth is the brand name of the public transport system serving the city and suburban areas of Perth, the state capital of Western Australia. It is managed by the Public Transport Authority (PTA), a state government organisation. Train op ...

FamilyRider), allow unlimited travel during specified times. Countries such as Switzerland have national integrated ticket systems, which not only extend across transport modes but can encompass entry into museums or leisure destinations. The UK, Australia and Sweden use such systems on public transport in major cities or metropolitan areas. Deploying integrated ticketing requires a high-level of coordination and co-operation between all public transport providers and the suppliers. Political, technological and project management issues have resulted in long delays in some cases. In Sydney the project has had to be restarted. In Dublin, the system has also suffered serious delays from the project start date in 2002 but the Leap Card system launched on 12 December 2011. In Stockholm, the task of replacing the existing magnetic stripe cards system with smart cards is finally nearing completion after the project was started in 2002.

Examples

Asia Pacific

Europe

See also

References