Featured Speaker

Lauren Sager Weinstein
Head of Oyster Development
Transport for London

This event will focus on

• Successful implementation of a complex IT product that has changed the behavior of Londoners travelling across the Capital
• Developing future ticketing strategy for Transport for London (TfL) to improve the customer experience and reduce TfL's cost of revenue collection so that more funds can be dedicated towards transit services
• Delivering innovation in the public sector
  

Who Should Attend

Anyone interested in understanding from a public sector perspective, the implementation of a complex technology system that has a direct impact on the millions of Londoners travelling each day.

Transport for London (TfL) was created in 2000 as the integrated body responsible for the Capital's transport system. Oyster is a travel "smartcard" introduced by Transport for London (TfL) in 2003, for passengers to travel on the Tube, bus, DLR, tram and some national rail services in London. Customers can use Oyster for season tickets, and can also store up to £90 cash to "pay as you go" and can be used and topped up indefinitely, saving time queuing for tickets at Tube stations and boarding buses as people fumble with cash.

Oyster has been very popular for TfL, representing 82% of all TfL trips, and approximately seven million people use Oyster routinely each month. Oyster has changed the way that customers purchase travel. In the past, customers who tended to purchase single tickets for rides on the Tube or bus, now overwhelmingly use pay as you go. This saves customers time, and smoothes TfL's operations by minimising queues and speeds boarding time on the bus. Oyster also allows more customers through the gate than magnetic tickets (essential during peak times at our busiest stations), and tackles fraud.

With the Oyster card a success, TfL is exploring its future ticketing strategy, and asking the big strategic question: Do we really need tickets at all on our public transport services? Tickets were created to show proof of travel rights, and advance sales were designed to speed up boarding on public transport vehicles. Yet requiring customers to buy a ticket means, in effect, that customers exchange one form of currency, e.g., pounds sterling, into a transport currency. Technological advances in credit and debit card technology, namely the contactless EMV standard, may make it possible for customers to purchase travel seamlessly -- in the same way that customers can buy a cup of coffee. This could provide significant customer benefit, would unlock operational savings, and would represent true inter-operability, with other transport networks and society at large.

About the speaker

Lauren Sager Weinstein is Head of Oyster Development at Transport for London (TfL), the integrated body responsible for the Capital's transport system. Oyster is London's contactless smartcard ticketing system for travel on the bus, Tube, tram, DLR, and National Rail in London. Ms. Sager Weinstein is responsible for development opportunities for Oyster, which is the largest contactless smartcard system in Europe.