Bus travellers (like me) may have noticed the decreasing number of prepay bus ticket machines, previously to be found alongside some of the bus stops in Central Edinburgh. The Scotsman has furnished me with the answer. The 32 machines are being removed, and from what I can see, largely have already been removed, despite the chance to reduce the ticket price to £1.10 by prepaying. Only 250000 tickets were bought using the machines in the last year, a fall from the early uptake, meaning that only just over 21 tickets were bought each day from each machine. This is quite striking as 100 million journeys are made each year.
The thing which concerns me is that the ticket machines were put in in anticipation of the trams, and now they are saying that trams will be credit-card swipable only - no cash will be used on board the tram. I have no real objection to being no cash, but credit card? How, for example, will children board the trams? And how will one pay for multiple tickets?
A solution which will at least solve the first of these problems, is to switch to an Oyster system. This system, used in London for a good number of years, is a prepaid card, available at Paypoints and the old season ticket retailers. A £3 deposit secures you a card, and then money can be added to your card in as large or small increments as you desire. The reduction of the busfare is so substantial, that even a weekend visitor to London is better off purchasing one of these cards (the 2011 prices are £1.30 per journey on Oyster card, £2.20 without). The card is scanned whenever you access public transport and your balance is debited for the cost of the ticket, up to the cost of a daily pass, at which limit your balance is stable - so in Edinburgh terms, if you will take the bus but you're not sure whether you will need to take 2 or 3, you no longer have to decide immediately. The first two buses will cost the set amount of £1.20, the third bus will automatically cap your bus fare at the bus pass cost of £3.00. (This example is overly simple, as the Oyster card system in London allows a significant discount as we've seen, but the principle is the same.) Every Londoner I know has at least one of these cards, and some have a second - sometimes because they misplaced the first one - which can be used for visitors.
The benefits of this system are manifold, and I will enumerate hereafter.
1. No more hunting around for the correct change before you can get on a bus (or breaking a £10 note to pay for the bus in the early morning as I often do when coming back to the burgh on a coach), leading to...
2. More use of public transport. I'm confident that I would use the bus much more often if I had a prepaid card with a discount on a single fare. It makes the decision to use the bus much easier if you've already paid for it. Especially considering that if I don't have the change, and must needs walk to a cash machine and then to a shop in order to get change, I might well decide to walk the whole way. See this article in the Times for a discussion of why walking is not the greenest option.
3. Quicker bus journeys. The time to swipe and beep is considerably less than the time to find, and sort your change.
4. Increased revenue for the bus company. Not only do you get to sit on my cash in advance, but also you get to keep the surplus not used by tourists when they leave. In London, the savings are so extreme that I make sure I have an Oyster card each time I visit, and about 50% of the time I have lost the card by the time I return. Transport for London must be 'up' about £30 or £40 pounds on my Oyster cards by this point *and* I've still saved money. As I've also noted, I would be very likely to increase my bus usage due to having prepaid, so yet more income would be coming the way of Lothian Buses.
5. The system can easily be updated to include the trams, if and when they finally arrive, so I'll be able to access the trams without using a credit card to do so, and so will my hypothetical children.
6. The existing swipe machines could almost certainly be modified to accept the new cards.
7. If the powers that be were indeed interested in cash free transport, prepaid balance cards are a good way of reinforcing this. London buses are now cash free - you either have an Oyster card or you pay at the bus stop before boarding. Even with such a high number of tourists, there is rarely any hold up explaining this on London buses, and the whole system works much better as a result.
Come on Edinburgh, how about it?
Yes, totally yes.
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