Denmark’s national smartcard takes shape

In an interview with Intelligent Transport’s Technical Editor, James Abbott, Hans Holmgren, Technical Director of Rejsekort A/S, explains the current status of the smartcard project and how it will be implemented to streamline passenger journeys in Denmark.

Denmark’s new national public transport smartcard, the Rejsekort, is due to enter pilot operation later this year in a test area in the southern part of Zealand. This will be the beginning of a national roll-out that will see the card extended to the capital, Copenhagen, next year. In 2010/11 it is planned to extend the card to cover the Öresund region, which includes part of southern Sweden.

This roll-out is the culmination of years of careful preparation. Following a tender competition, a contract was awarded in June 2005. The winning bidder was the East West consortium, in which the principal players are Thales and Accenture.

Much has had to be done to reach the point where the card is ready for public use. Equipment had to be manufactured and installed, and staff have had to be trained. The business processes surrounding the card are being finalised and a comprehensive testing phase is now in progress, leading up to the project roll-out in late 2008.

All modes

The Rejsekort will cover bus, train and metro services. Bus operators participating include Movia (whose territory includes the Greater Copenhagen area), Sydtrafik, Midttrafik and Nordjyllands trafikselskab. On the rail side, the national state operator DSB and its Copenhagen commuter division S-train are participating, along with the Copenhagen automated mini-metro and Arriva, a private operator of rail services on the Jutland peninsula.

A new company, Rejsekort A/S, has been set up to administer the programme; shares in Rejsekort A/S are held by the participating public transport companies. The new company’s responsibilities include:

• Acting as contract holder
• Administering the contract
• Managing the complete programme
• Co-ordinating further developments
• Receiving public transport operators’ payments for their use of the system
• Paying the system provider for system and operation

Smartcard

Rejsekort will replace a number of paper based systems. It was initiated in 1995 and expanded from a Greater Copenhagen programme to a national project in 1999.

The Rejsekort is a standard Mifare plastic card, of the type used in London and as proposed for the Netherlands, the country developing the other national smartcard scheme taking shape in Europe.

The card just has to be passed over the reader to register a user coming on to the public transport system or leaving it. This process takes a maximum of 0.25 of a second and this speed of operation will allow the Rejsekort to deal with large crowds easily.

The smartcard acts as an electronic purse, storing money, and an electronic ticket, giving authority to travel. It also stores other data such as discount entitlement for students.

Easy to use

For passengers, the card will be very easy to use. The one card covers public transport all over the country, and will be used in the same way everywhere. There will be the same equipment everywhere and the same basic rules for usage. No knowledge of the fare system or fare products will be required – as with the Oyster card in London, the system will calculate the cheapest fare for the journey undertaken and deduct money from the card accordingly.

There has to be money on the card before beginning the journey. Money can be put on the card by cash at a ticket office, vending machines on platforms and on stations, via the internet or with an auto top-up system, where money is automatically taken from users’ bank accounts when the balance on the card falls below a certain level. Then, the passenger simply ‘beeps’ the card on a reader at the start of a journey, beeps out and beeps in again at a change of mode (eg train to bus) in the middle of the journey, and then beeps out at the end the journey.

An attractive feature of the Rejsekort is that it will calculate the cost of the journey based on the distance as the crow flies. For example, if the only way to get from A to B by public transport is by a detour to C where there is a change of mode from bus to train, the Rejsekort will only charge as if the passenger had gone direct from A to B. This will help to make public transport more competitive with the private car.

Each Mifare card costs approximately €1 to produce: it is anticipated that there will be a small charge levied on the customer to cover this.

National coverage

It is anticipated that the Rejsekort will attract widespread usage, with approximately two million cards in use by 2012. If this is achieved, it will demonstrate impressive penetration: the Danish population amounts to 5.5million in total.

The card is expected to cover 435 million journeys a year in four years time, with approximately one billion card readings.

The next stage will be to extend usage of the Rejsekort beyond public transport, to cover other public services and small transactions such as parking and payment in newsagents.

The Octopus card in Hong Kong has virtually replaced small change for everyday transactions in the former British colony.

“Hong Kong inspires us”, admits Mr. Holmgren. “We could have the first smartcard in Europe to imitate this.”

Mr. Holmgren lists a series of advantages from introducing the national smartcard:

• Improved management knowledge of traffic flows, with improved planning of service patterns as a result
• Reduced cash handling, with consequent savings
• A reduction in fraud
• Reduced distribution costs for the ticketing system
• Increased revenue due to a more attractive public transport system as a result of the simple tariff

“With Rejsekort, we will be lowering some of the barriers of the public transport system – we will be making it easier to use buses, trains and metros”, enthuses Mr. Holmgren. “This will also be a benefit to the environment through a reduction in demand for car travel.”