The Go-Ahead Group has introduced a new contactless ticketing system allowing passengers to pay for their travel with their smartphone.
Customers link a bank account with the HOPSTA app and are then charged the lowest possible fare for their journey, as terminals called iBeacons determine when the passenger got on and off the vehicle. When boarding the bus the passengers show their activated pass to the driver, then once their journey is completed the app calculates the fare and charges the user automatically.
The system has already received plaudits, winning the Transport prize at the 2018 Smart Cities UK awards, and following a successful trial by students on the University of Southampton’s Unilink bus network it will be piloted on a fully-public route in the North East.
Go-Ahead Group CIO Enrique Fernandez-Pino said, “We are thrilled to roll out this radical new technology to our customers, and allow them to track and pay for their journeys in the easiest possible way. Cutting a new path with technology is something we’re proud to do at Go-Ahead, and we hope to roll out this technology on more and more routes in the future.”
