Oyster spearheads a ticketing revolution: the Oyster smart card holds out the promise of faster, easier, and more convenient travel for visitors and commuters using London's public transport network - Fare Collection

International Railway Journal, Feb, 2004 by Mike Knutton

FULL implementation of the 1.2 billion [pounds sterling] Oyster smart card for public transport in London, which is one of the biggest and most complex integrated ticketing projects of its kind in the world, will be completed later this year.

Completion comes about six years after the contract for the 17-year Private Finance Initiative (PFI) project was signed by TranSys, a consortium led by Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS). TranSys is responsible for system design, installation, operation, maintenance, and marketing.

The credit card-sized Oyster cards themselves are based on Philip's Mifare chip technology complying with the ISO 14443 A standard, and which has an estimated share of 80% of the global public transport smart-ticketing market. TranSys has purchased about 3 million Oyster cards from Atos Origin and Giesecke & Devrient.

Oyster has been gradually introduced for various classes of travel and outlets, including weekly, monthly, annual season, and pre-pay tickets since November 2002 when 80,000 London Underground (LU) and London Bus staff were issued with cards. At that time, London's mayor, Mr Ken Livingstone commented: "This is the start of a ticketing revolution in London. The public can look forward to less queuing to buy tickets and faster movement through ticket gates and on to buses."

Other benefits for passengers include the ability to buy and top up smart cards away from stations through internet and telesales, and to have the card cancelled (with no loss of credit) if it is lost so that it cannot be used by anyone else. TranSys has so far done the following work:

* introduced new touch-screen and multilingual ticket machines which also accept payment by credit card

* installed 16,000 smart card readers on LU gates and on buses

* fitted smart card technology in 255 Underground stations and 28 national rail stations served by LU

* upgraded the ticket machines at 2300 local ticket outlets and rebranded the outlets as Ticket Stops

* equipped LU ticket offices with new ticket machines, and

* developed PrePay, a pay-as-you-go product allowing passengers to put money on the card that is then deducted according to the journey made--single, return, or one-day travel card.

Depending on how it is loaded, the Oyster card will be valid for use on London Underground, London Buses, the Docklands Light Railway, the Croydon Tramlink and national rail sectors of journeys within appropriate zones of the Greater London area. Heathrow Express and Gatwick Express airport services are excluded. So far, the 7-Day Travelcard has proved the most popular product with 400,000 regular customers.

Initially, the card will be available for travel only. But it has the potential to be extended to such functions as car parking, leisure centres and libraries, which may be added later.

Oyster functions through an aerial and a small microchip, which can handle and store information and is embedded in the smart card. When the card is touched on the card reader, power flows through the aerial and information moves from the card to the reader and back again. Communication is by radio signals and a transaction is said to take less than one fifth of a second. By performing this function at the beginning and the end of the journey on LU and at the beginning only on buses, the fare is calculated and recorded and compared against the value remaining on the card.

The card is described as "contactless", but literature on card usage says "... customers only need to touch the card readers with their Oyster cards as they pass through the ticket gates at London Underground or national rail stations, or board a bus."

The card may remain in its plastic wallet but the act of touching the reader will inevitably reduce throughput compared with other contactless systems, which in some cases can operate with the card several centimetres from the reader, meaning that the card may remain in the passenger's pocket or handbag as he or she walks through the gate. There have already been cases of passengers slowing down traffic flow by offering the card either at too great a distance from the reader or at the wrong angle to it. TranSys's approach is to try to persuade passengers to touch the reader with the card every time to eliminate the possibility of failed communication. "This is a new system and we are trying to instil a behavioural standard into people who have in any case been accustomed to passing magnetic stripe tickets through the gate," says TranSys.

Once a card has been issued it can be topped up to meet the travel needs of each individual customer. This can be done at upgraded ticket machines in stations, at any Ticket Stop, or at a station ticket office.

Smart cards are among the most secure ways to store information and TranSys says that Oyster users "can be confident of the security of the data on their card". Access to the information is only possible using secret keys specific to each individual card and known only to the devices permitted to process the cards.