Action for Public Transport (N.S.W.) Inc.

The introduction of a smartcard transit ticket throughout the Netherlands is being hampered by cost over-runs and a lack of project leadership. A Customer Acceptance Panel is to be set up to monitor passengers' reactions to the wider use of the existing card.

An initial development contract for the smartcard ticket worth more than €120 million was signed in July 2003. Five years on, progress has been glacially slow, whilst the cost of the project has soared to more than €1 billion.

The early days were beset with frequent problems, such as incorrect fares being charged and gate clocks not being synchronised, which made a nonsense of the rule that interchanges between modes within 35 min should be free of a second step-in (flag-fall) charge.

One reason why the development and implementation costs have gone so far over budget is that the complexity of the project seems to have been significantly under-estimated. Worse, the delays in implementation have also meant that fewer benefits than planned have been delivered in terms of reducing fraudulent travel. One result of the problems has been the decision by national bus and tram operator Connexxion to pull out of the project team. A commission of inquiry recommended a number of organisational improvements to the ticket implementation programme, noting that "there are too many thinkers and talkers but a conspicuous absence of one leader".

Public support waning

Consumer and passenger organisations have also started to withdraw their active support for the OV-Chipkaart in recent months. The Netherlands Consumers' Association, public transport users' association Rover, the ANWB representing road users, student organisation LSVb and the disabled organisation CG-Raad all feel that the card still presents more disadvantages than benefits to the average user. Amongst the objections they have identified are the multitude of local tariff structures, resulting in a lack of transparent fares for passengers; different local rules for interchange between modes; significant price increases on some more circuitous routes (instead of simple A to B distances); the discontinuation of return fares and non-compliance with laws relating to security of personal data.

Furthermore, the consumer groups consider that a non-refundable charge of €7.50 for a smart card with only a five-year lifespan is unreasonable, and it is likely to discourage casual users making occasional trips. If a card is lost or stolen, only those smart cards registered to a specific user can be hot-listed and blocked. These passengers are then expected to pay €10 for a replacement card and wait up to four weeks for delivery.

Calculating the fare

For bus and tram services, the whole country is presently divided into "strippenkaart" zones with an average diameter of 4.25 km. Fares are determined by a one-zone step-in charge plus the number of zones passed through. However, OV-Chipkaart is intended to allow operators to move away from this relatively blunt zonal structure towards fares that are related to the distance travelled. In theory, this should make short journeys across zone boundaries cheaper, whereas longer and more circuitous routes could become more expensive. However, both step-in charges and per-km rates are determined by the local operators and regional authorities, and can differ widely.

All the parties have consistently ignored any form of "daily capping" whereby the maximum charge would be no greater than the locally-applicable "day rover" ticket.

As well as cutting fare evasion, there are other operator benefits to be gained. A recent report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that 50% of people causing a nuisance on public transport and 60% to 70% of those responsible for assaults on staff were travelling without a valid ticket.

The article may be seen in its entirety at http://www.railwaygazette.com/news_view/article/2009/01/9219/ov_chipkaart_roll_out_creeps_forward.html.