Income from tickets purchased on mobile apps

[ChrisC]

I live on a rural bus route which is heavily subsidised by the local authority. The route has recently been threatened with complete withdrawal but the local authority has agreed to fund it until September next year when its future will again be reviewed. The local parish councils in the villages along the route are currently encouraging residents to use it or lose it.

As with many routes of this kind the fares are quite high in comparison to more urban areas. For most return journeys a day ticket costing £7.70 is the cheapest option. I usually purchase a Dayrider on the Stagecoach app and use a mobile ticket on my phone. The Stagecoach buses on the route do not have machines which scan the mobile ticket and you just have to show it to the driver. Some drivers hardly seem to even glance at the ticket and I wondered whether my use of the route is being recorded and if the money I pay through the app is being recorded as local income for the route. I know it costs 10p more to purchase a paper ticket on the bus but would the £7.80 I would be paying then be more likely to be recorded as income from my local route and strengthen the case for a more long term future.

 

[Flying Snail]

I would say that almost certainly buying a ticket on the bus on your route will count more than an app, particularly as they are not even scanning the apps.

You would hope that a real picture of use was being taken but I wouldn't be surprised if some clerk or accountant with little interest or knowledge was just counting the fares taken on the route in question.

 

[Llandudno]

I would say that almost certainly buying a ticket on the bus on your route will count more than an app, particularly as they are not even scanning the apps.

You would hope that a real picture of use was being taken but I wouldn't be surprised if some clerk or accountant with little interest or knowledge was just counting the fares taken on the route in question.

Indeed!

I suspect that they will use the type of data they need to get the result they are looking for.

Ie. This route is costing us money to keep going, let’s publicise the actual revenue taken on board the bus to justify withdrawal.

When in truth all the Day Rover ticket revenue across the network should be accuratly apportioned, but if there is no record of the journey being made then the financial position of the 141 looks even more parlous.

I have travelled on numerous buses with TfGM Wayfarer, Derbyshire Wayfarer and PlusBus tickets and the driver has not bothered to record the journey. I find this particularly prevalent in the late evening, when perhaps some drivers are keen to show how few passengers there are using late night buses in the hope they may get withdrawn, leading to a lower percentage of late turns at their depot….?

 

[Megafuss]

I live on a rural bus route which is heavily subsidised by the local authority. The route has recently been threatened with complete withdrawal but the local authority has agreed to fund it until September next year when its future will again be reviewed. The local parish councils in the villages along the route are currently encouraging residents to use it or lose it.

As with many routes of this kind the fares are quite high in comparison to more urban areas. For most return journeys a day ticket costing £7.70 is the cheapest option. I usually purchase a Dayrider on the Stagecoach app and use a mobile ticket on my phone. The Stagecoach buses on the route do not have machines which scan the mobile ticket and you just have to show it to the driver. Some drivers hardly seem to even glance at the ticket and I wondered whether my use of the route is being recorded and if the money I pay through the app is being recorded as local income for the route. I know it costs 10p more to purchase a paper ticket on the bus but would the £7.80 I would be paying then be more likely to be recorded as income from my local route and strengthen the case for a more long term future.

It requires the driver to press a button on the ticket machine to record.

Operators will usually assign a proportion of day/week ticket revenue depending on what percentage of TOTAL passengers use each service.

To that point, I have to say, Stagecoach have been extremely slow to adopt proper scanning technology for tickets.

In essence, Stagecoach assume the drivers record the use (as with a paper ticket). Given other operators don't rely on this nearly as much, it is such a glaring flaw, I don't know how they can make reasonable informed decisions on service use - compared to their peers anyway.

 

[185143]

I've been on a few London buses with a paper travelcard in the last week. Most of the drivers haven't even bothered to look and/or acknowledge the ticket, let alone press a button on the machine.

Granted, busy London bus routes don't quite have the same concern over usage not being properly logged.

 

[Deerfold]

I've been on a few London buses with a paper travelcard in the last week. Most of the drivers haven't even bothered to look and/or acknowledge the ticket, let alone press a button on the machine.

Granted, busy London bus routes don't quite have the same concern over usage not being properly logged.

It's well known that paper travelcards are poorly recorded on London Buses. But they're such a small proportion of usage, it's not a huge problem.

 

[pjnathanail]

As an absolute minimum, at least if you purchase a day ticket on the bus you can be confident that one trip will be recorded and ascribed to that route, even if the driver fails to record your use of the ticket on your return journey later on.

Whereas, purchasing the ticket on the app is entirely reliant on driver input, which is not accurate as outlined above.

If the ticket you buy is restricted to a route / small group of routes then the app ticket revenue will likely be apportioned correctly to the route(s) in question - failure to do this would be very poor for even the laziest of commercial analysts!

However, if it’s a network wide ticket then the revenue will likely be apportioned based on recorded usage - i.e. the driver pressing the button on the machine - so your concerns are correct.

 

[ChrisC]

As an absolute minimum, at least if you purchase a day ticket on the bus you can be confident that one trip will be recorded and ascribed to that route, even if the driver fails to record your use of the ticket on your return journey later on.

Whereas, purchasing the ticket on the app is entirely reliant on driver input, which is not accurate as outlined above.

If the ticket you buy is restricted to a route / small group of routes then the app ticket revenue will likely be apportioned correctly to the route(s) in question - failure to do this would be very poor for even the laziest of commercial analysts!

However, if it’s a network wide ticket then the revenue will likely be apportioned based on recorded usage - i.e. the driver pressing the button on the machine - so your concerns are correct.

Thank you. I was beginning to think that was the case. Most journeys I make on the route in question cost £4.50 for a single journey, so for a return journey the £7.70 day ticket is the cheapest option. This is the only day ticket available and is a network wide ticket which covers a huge area. Very good value if you want to travel more widely. I will therefore stop using mobile tickets purchased online through the Stagecoach app and return to buying a paper ticket from the driver as I board the bus, even if it does cost 10p more.

 

[pjnathanail]

Thank you. I was beginning to think that was the case. Most journeys I make on the route in question cost £4.50 for a single journey, so for a return journey the £7.70 day ticket is the cheapest option. This is the only day ticket available and is a network wide ticket which covers a huge area. Very good value if you want to travel more widely. I will therefore stop using mobile tickets purchased online through the Stagecoach app and return to buying a paper ticket from the driver as I board the bus, even if it does cost 10p more.

No worries. It’s a really interesting point that you made, so I’m glad you did.

The solution would be for operators to put QR codes on their App M-Tickets, and then have passengers scan the QR code as they board each bus. This at least means that if the operator WANTS to do the extra analysis they could accurately apportion revenue and usage by route. No guarantee they’ll bother mind…

Stagecoach are one of the few operators who may struggle to do the above as they are one of the few operators who do not use the Ticketer ETM [Electronic Ticket Machine] platform - this platform has very good support for mobile tickets and QR code scanning, which then enables interested operators to see down to an individual ticket level of granularity in the back office how often and when / where a specific ticket has been used.

Useful as much for spotting suspected ticket fraud as it is for commercial / revenue analysis.

 

[markymark2000]

Sadly, most operators do not properly distribute app ticket revenue down to the routes. Pre Ticketer, I believe that Arriva used to judge viability of a route from actual on bus revenue from that trip and it was done on a trip by trip basis. Returns, day tickets, weeklies, didn't count one bit towards it and often drivers never recorded that data. That's how it came about that Arriva would provide such a dismal service towards the afternoon and evenings because people on these trips were people using existing prepaid tickets and so Arriva kept withdrawing very busy buses citing 'not viable' because the trips didn't have much revenue, completely ignoring the fact the reason it didn't have the revenue was because it was full of people with tickets they had already paid for. Sadly, too much decided by people in offices using 'data' rather than listening to actual customers and seeing things on the ground.

Luckily, with Ticketer, it has started to show a lot of companies actual passenger usage rather than them cutting routes and trips due to low usage when in actual fact, the buses are well used but passengers use mobile tickets or pre paid tickets.

 

[Gloster]

I don’t understand the technicalities, but I think that most journeys on Southern Vectis are recorded when the passenger boards. Credit card size Rovers and ENCTS cards are placed on a pad by the driver, as are paper single or day tickets: the last two have one of those complicated designs involving hundreds of tiny dots, which is read by the same reader that does bank cards. Some passes can also tap on and tap off: the ‘off’ uses a separate reader. If the system is working, there are few journeys that don’t get recorded.

 

[XAM2175]

as are paper single or day tickets: the last two have one of those complicated designs involving hundreds of tiny dots, which is read by the same reader that does bank cards.

... those would be 2D barcodes that are read by the optical scanner mounted above the card reader pad. They can't be read by the card pad itself.

 

[Gloster]

... those would be 2D barcodes that are read by the optical scanner mounted above the card reader pad. They can't be read by the card pad itself.

Sorry, I realised that, but I should have made it clear that the whole thing is one unit with the reader directly above the pad. It also reads card details on smart ‘phones, or whatever it is that people have on them for paying.

 

[XAM2175]

Sorry, I realised that, but I should have made it clear that the whole thing is one unit with the reader directly above the pad. It also reads card details on smart ‘phones, or whatever it is that people have on them for paying.

Fair enough. It's irrelevant to this thread anyway, as the OP specifically mentions that "Stagecoach buses on the route do not have machines which scan the mobile ticket and you just have to show it to the driver."