You can travel with electronic tickets in Budapest in a year

Kalef Newsletter learned a lot of things from BKK (Budapest Transport Center) on last week’s Car-Free Day. Perhaps, one of them the most interesting was that traveling with electronic tickets was within reach, velvet.hu wrote.

BKK said the following at the weekend:

The full introduction is expected by the end of 2017.

The devices are already being installed at the stations and in the vehicles a year in advance.

It will be possible that a student card or a bank card can function as a pass.

It is planned in long terms that the service can be used by phone; the system will be built that it will allow it originally.

BKK machines have already been prepared for this, only smaller assemblies must be performed and the software must be updated.

It will be possible to use the services of BKK without purchase, only by possessing a bank card. You just simply had to touch the bank card to the device and it deducts the cost of the trip.

There will be opportunity to check the travel history on the Internet and at the BKK machines, that is what kind of lines we used and when.

600 inspectors are expected to travel around the city after the introduction.

First it will be just a piece of plastic

The electronic ticket system will be introduced in several phases, and the peculiarities of the introduction explain that actually any piece of plastic could be electronic pass for half a year.

At the end of this year, BKK employees get their cards, then the people over 65 years in the spring of 2016. Two groups whose members have been already able to travel for free on public transport. In fact, the situation will be similar for a while as for the phonograph, when the technology, with which sound could be recorded, had existed for 20 years, but it was not possible to play it back.

This means that distribution of the cards begins at the end of this year, but vehicles are being equipped scanners only in the second half of 2016.

After BKK employees and retirees, people with annual and monthly BKK passes come, they can buy electronic passes at the end of 2016 for the first time. Then in the summer of 2017, first the people using other passes, then people traveling with tickets come, velvet.hu wrote.

In addition to the scanners in the vehicles, entry gate system will be finally built up, as it has already implemented in most of the major cities of Europe. It will be in the second half of 2017.

There will be time-based ticket, not distance-based

Kalef Newsletter’s post wrote about distance-based tickets, but BKK wrote to velvet.hu that there will be no such ticket. However, instead of it, time-based ticket will be introduced.

More specifically, the current ticket, which is available for a unit price and entitles to a one-hour-long travel and interchanges in the subway, will be thoroughly transformed.

“The current single ticket type products will be replaced by traveling at the expense of cash balances and the daily spending ceiling. The time-based ticket will provide an unlimited number of transfers for the customers within a given interval” – BKK wrote.

Inspectors…inspectors everywhere

There are currently 500 inspectors in the lines. After the introduction of the electronic tickets, 600 inspectors will travel around the city. This does not seem a lot more, but many of them will be free when the entry gates will have built.

For now, velvet.hu knows much that the delay is about one year compared to the calculation on the BKK website. The total volume of the investment will be HUF 27 billion, from which 16 billion will be financed by the EBRD.

based on the article of velvet.hu
translated by BA

Photo: BKK Facebook page

Source: http://velvet.hu