The Department is supporting a number of schemes that are implementing the ITSO national standard for interoperable transport smart cards.
The ‘NoWcard’ scheme is live in Blackpool and full roll out across the remainder of Lancashire and Cumbria is expected over the next year.
Cheshire county council is migrating from its existing smartcard scheme to the ITSO standard with an initial rollout by the end of 2006 further stages following incrementally across their scheme. Nottinghamshire and Southampton are expected to complete their migration from existing schemes by April 2008.
The ‘Yorcard’ pilot, based on a number of bus and rail routes in South Yorkshire, is expected to go live with an ITSO scheme towards the end of 2007.
The use of ITSO has also been included in the new South Western rail franchise to be implemented by 2009.
Scotland and Wales are also using ITSO-based smartcards for their national bus concession scheme for older and disabled persons. Over 1 million cards have been issued and their entire bus fleets are being equipped with the necessary card readers over the coming months. The bus fleet on the Shetland Islands introduced the ITSO standard during November.
The Department is looking at the potential for using smartcards as part of the national concessionary fares scheme to be launched April 2008.