TravelMaster’s outgoing MD Matt Smallwood, reflects on eight years of delivering smarter travel for South Yorkshire’s passengers – and helping put the region in the driving seat of smart ticketing in the UK.
This month it will have been eight years since I first started supporting passengers on their journey to a smarter way to pay for public transport. As I now get ready to move on to pastures new, I can’t think of a better time to reflect on the achievements and progress the region’s operators, authorities and my dedicated team have made in that time.
When I joined TravelMaster, the same hand-written cardboard passes that I’d used years earlier to get to and from The Sheffield College were the standard ticket media we used, there were no smart products and we primarily fielded a range of hard to understand products priced at a premium for rail valid travel.
Since then, we’ve matured to become one of the most advanced multi-modal integrated smart ticketing schemes - with more than 17 million journeys made a year pre-pandemic. TravelMaster now provides a simplified range of products priced primarily for local bus and light rail use and, over those last eight years, has been at the forefront of smart ticketing in the UK.
So, what has this looked like in practice? In 2014 we made the huge jump from paper tickets to smartcards – introducing the first smart multi-operator tickets in the country – and alongside that we introduced the UK’s lowest priced multi-operator tickets for kids (the GetAbout range). In 2015 smart products were sold on-board (another national first) and saw passengers paying less for bus only travel in more zones with the introduction of new bus only tickets.
Then, in 2016, we simplified 250 confusing tickets down to 26 to make it easier for passengers to access integrated tickets. 2017 was a slower year as we restructured – but we got right back on track in 2018, with the introduction of the 18-21 Discount Card which discounted tickets for young people and made our one-day tickets available as mTickets on operator apps. 2019 again saw huge changes as we introduced online sales and enabled tickets to be downloaded through an iPhone.
Obviously COVID-19 put the brakes on many plans and hit us hard – but we cracked on and our priority turned to recovery and developing meaningful partnership with business and industry to support this. Ultimately, TravelMaster is a great example of public transport operators coming together voluntarily and collaborating with local authorities to provide passengers with value for money.
So, as I pack up my office, I can only be proud of the huge achievements TravelMaster has made – through the support of its operators, and collaboration with our partners and all for the benefit of passengers.
I can’t wait to watch what happens next – wearing my new hat as head of digital strategy for Transport for the North.
Learn more about TravelMaster at sytravelmaster.com
