Contactless payment coming to National Express West Midlands buses
Buses across the West Midlands will soon be fitted with London-style contactless payment devices, it has been revealed.
National Express, the principal bus operator in the region, will seek to fit every one of its 1,500 buses with the machines over the next two years.
The devices will accept payments via bank cards, smartphones, Swift cards and even smartwatches.
But bosses have also reassured passengers they will still be able pay with cash.
They hope the new payment methods will reduce overall journey times by around 10 percent.
Travel services in London - including the Tube, buses and the London Overground - are already fitted with contactless devices.
The first ticket machines will be appearing on buses in Coventry at the end of this year, and will be rolled out across the whole West Midlands fleet over the following two years.
National Express Managing Director, Peter Coates, said: "We know our customers want the choice of using contactless when they travel. Only a month ago, we introduced it on the Midland Metro and already seven percent of passengers buying a ticket on board are using contactless.
"So, as part of our pledge to the West Midlands Bus Alliance to get more people travelling by bus, we are investing in contactless because it makes journeys quicker and easier for passengers."
The thinking behind the new ticket machines, which have been secured through a multi-million pound deal, is to speed up bus journey times because passengers will spend less time buying a ticket.
This benefit was highlighted in a recent report titled 'Greener Journeys - The Effects of Congestion on Bus Passengers'
Its author, Professor David Begg, said: "If London-style cashless buses with contactless payment and smart ticketing could be extended to the rest of the UK, bus journey times could be improved by up to 10 percent by halving dwell time at bus stops.
"In urban conditions, dwell time makes up between 25 percent and 33 percent of total journey time.
"The big five bus operators in the UK have set a target to introduce contactless bus transactions by 2022. They should do everything possible to accelerate this, and it is realistic for them to achieve this goal in the large conurbations within three years."
National Express West Midlands awarded the contract for driver consoles, on-board computers, ticket printers, validators and a coinciding back-office system to German company INIT Innovations in Transportation.
INIT Managing Director, Jens Mullak, said: "Our solutions are already in use around the globe, and National Express is an important new customer for us in the UK. I think that, with the popularity of contactless bank cards and the use of mobile phones, contactless will surely replace cash payments more and more."
