A parliamentary report on transport has criticised the
'daft' government policy on smartcarts.
The
English national concessionary travel scheme launched on 1
April, promised free national bus travel to older and disabled
people in England. The scheme was hailed as a major opportunity for
the government and transport operators to integrate ticketing, with
the introduction of
smartcard concessionary travel passes throughout England.
However, the fifth report by the
Parliamentary Select Committee on Transport has produced a
damning verdict on the delivery of the technology.
"Ten years after it expressed its commitment to promoting
integrated bus ticketing, the government has achieved too little of
practical value," the report says. "It is a nonsense that the
everyday act of changing buses is still made unnecessarily
inconvenient and expensive by poor ticketing arrangements. The
government needs to pay more attention to resolving these basic
problems which penalise passengers and deter others from using
buses at all."
The select committee recommends that the traffic commissioners
be given powers to arbitrate when bus companies and local transport
authorities can't agree terms for multi-operator tickets.
The most damning verdict on the government's performance was on
the deployment of smartcard technologies.
"The current situation whereby 11 million concessionary travel
smartcards have been issued but most buses are not equipped to read
them is daft. The government needs to agree a programme with bus
operators for installation of
ITSO smartcard equipment on
buses."
In conclusion, the report calls on the
Department for Transport to
commission an evaluation of the benefits of the national scheme for
free local bus travel.