Dutch experience feeds skepticism about European public transport smart card

The upheaval in the Netherlands must have gone totally past Lancashire County Councillor Ms. Jean Yates. At the recent Optimum2 conference in Zaandam, she held an energetic plea in favour of the introduction of a European smart card to be used in any public transport mode. Using public transport, she stated, is far too difficult. Dutch attendants to the conference couldn’t suppress their laughter.

Whatever happened in the Netherlands to cause this hilarity?

Four cities
Ever since the serious budget cuts in public city transport in the nineties, the four largest Dutch cities have been wanting to introduce a new, electronic ticketing system. That would give them insight in travel details and the opportunity to diversify prices according to rush hours or slow hours and to deter fare dodgers.

In 2003 the four cities and the Dutch Department of Transport together decided on the implementation of a built-in-chip card for rail, metro, bus and tram services. As the responsibility for regional public transport in the Netherlands lies with the provinces, municipal governments and public transport companies, the ministry of Transport laid responsibility for the implementation of the card with them. The card was first introduced in Rotterdam in 2004 and was supposed to be in use in the rest of the Randstad area soon after that, regardless of whether roll out in the rest of the country would be decided on.

London, Hong Kong, Singapore
A similar smart card was already successfully in use in London, Hong Kong and Singapore. Together, a conglomerate of Dutch Railways, the public transport firm Connexxion and the municipal transport authorities for the Hague (HTM), Amsterdam (GVB) and Rotterdam (RET) formed the company Trans Link Systems (TLS) for the design, implementation and maintenance of the smart card system. TLS selected Hong Kong’s urban service subway provider, the MTRC, and its subsidiary company Octopus Cards Limited to help replicate Hong Kong’s contactless smart card system in the Netherlands.

National implementation
But in 2006 the Minister of Transport decided on national implementation of the card, which would take slightly longer: until January first 2009. And by now, even the chances of implementation by 2009 have become very slim. Rotterdam and, on a smaller scale, Amsterdam remain the only places where the card is in use, and even there travellers are still allowed to use the old method of payment.

Hacked
And travellers are right to hold on to their paper tickets, for technical difficulties abound: defects in entrances and machines (a complaint of nearly half of the bus drivers), wrong amounts being deducted from bank accounts, travellers being unable to check out (which automatically leads to payment).

To top up with a political scandal developed when it was demonstrated in December of last year that the chip could be hacked rather easily. It turned out to be secured by an inferior –cheap – method. The current Deputy Minister of Transport, Mrs. Tineke Huizinga, tried to smooth over the security issue for as long as she could. But after the devastating conclusions of a contra-expertise became public, she could no longer deny the problems and got into political heavy weather.

Core problems
If the card was designed after the successful cards in London, Hong Kong and Singapore, how come it works in those cities, but not in Rotterdam? “TLS wanted the chip in the card to be as economic as possible, so it cut down on the chip’s memory capacity,” explains computer specialist Melanie Rieback of the VU University Amsterdam. The widely heard explanation that the chip should be inferior is wrong: TLS could have opted for a suitable security system.

Mark van der Horst, responsible for transport in the city council of Amsterdam at the time of implementation, defines a second core problem: the absence of directing by the Transport Department. He calls both failures – of chip memory and in management – irreparable.

“What is now happening in the Netherlands, would have been impossible in London or Paris,” he comments in Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. “In London the card was introduced without having to take into account the public transport systems of Birmingham or Dover. The same goes for Paris. The system there differs from the one in, say, Lyon.”

Sunk cost paradox
So if a national project causes this many and large difficulties, how does Ms. Yates expect a European smart card to be introduced any time soon (or ever)? The Dutch skepticism is understandable.

Furthermore, the sunk cost paradox – which means that once a costs are made to achieve a goal, people are unwilling to give up the goal and take their losses – determines that the Dutch project will be persevered for a long time to come, no matter how many difficulties will present themselves. And once the Dutch card is fully in use, it will not be given up easily to make room for a different, European system.

Don’t hesitate to relate your experience with electronic ticketing systems in other cities in the comments section!