Towards Seamless Public Transport

Public transport is presently undergoing transformations towards achieving more seamlessness. A new dynamic is particularly noticeable in the areas of ticketing, network design and institutional coordination. Essential considerations of these developments for users, operators and governments were discussed at a joint seminar of the International Transport Forum and the Korean Transport Institute in March 2012. Some policy-relevant conclusions are presented here, notably:

• E-ticketing opens up new opportunities to users and operators, as well as governments; 
• Bank account-based ticketing enables universal payments, both nationally and internationally; 
• Careful network design that exploits network economies can give rise to a ‘virtuous cycle’ for public transport systems; 
• The success of e-ticketing and network design depends on good institutional coordination, which is based on a strong political will and an effective tendering system.