COURSE 05 - SERVICE AND AUTHORITY DESIGN
How People Pay
This one-day course helps you work through how fares are collected on your Authority's network. We'll follow a passenger's payment through to the figures your finance team receives, then work through five decisions about how people pay. We use your fares and the Operators serving your area. Your passengers' payment habits are part of the discussion too. We spend half the day explaining how fare collection works. You'll see what happens between someone tapping a card on a reader and the money reaching a bank account. We'll then use that understanding to help you write a clearer specification and ask suppliers informed questions.
WHERE TICKETING STARTS AND ENDS
We'll follow a passenger's payment through to the bank account that receives it. Under franchising, that's your Authority's account. Under an Enhanced Partnership, it goes to each Operator's account instead. The money usually arrives on the next working day.
We'll also look at what happens before and after the payment. A passenger may use an app before the bus arrives. Your team may receive the reports weeks after the journey. We'll help you include those service and reporting requirements in your specification, alongside the payment requirements.
How the day works.
We introduce the nine organisations and pieces of equipment covered by the course, and explain their roles in a fare payment. For example, the card processor asks the passenger's bank to approve a payment and charges a fee. You'll see where each part fits in your specification.
We cover cash, bank cards, phones, concessionary passes, season cards, app tickets, printed tickets, paying afterwards and free travel. For each method, we look at what happens in practice, the cost to your Authority and which passengers could be left out.
We work through seven everyday examples, step by step. You'll follow a contactless tap, an app ticket, a concessionary pass, cash, a refund and a supplier payment. We also look at reporting, where information moves but money does not.
We'll help your team record who sets fares, who keeps the fare money and who holds the journey records. You'll also note whether your Authority owns those records or can only view them, and which figures are confirmed or estimated.
Together, we'll work through five decisions: Who needs to be able to pay? What will you promise passengers about price? Who owns each part of the service? Where will the fare money sit? What must a supplier provide? You'll also agree which role should lead on each set of questions.
We give you a sentence from a real specification that is too weak to use. You'll have ten minutes to improve it, using the decisions made that afternoon to make the requirement more precise.
What you leave with
ONE FARE, FOLLOWED END TO END
We work through seven examples in this level of detail during the course. Here, we follow a passenger tapping a contactless card on a reader.
Who should attend
We suggest involving the colleagues who can help with the financial and legal decisions, the technology and the passenger experience. The roles below are a useful starting point.
If your area also has rail, tram or ferry services, ask a colleague who knows them to join for half a day. They can help you include those services in the ticketing discussion.
We explain each term before we use it. If something isn't clear, please ask. You can stop us at any point.
We build the exercises around your network. Before the course, tell us what you can about your current arrangements. You don't need to have every answer. We'll use what you share, including the questions your team is still working through.
Your pack includes a glossary of technical terms you may meet in a tender, money flows for franchising and Enhanced Partnerships, and the figures your specification needs to include.
BUILD THE COURSES AROUND YOUR PLAN
Course 5 is the second of four Service and Authority Design courses. It follows Course 4, where you set out the network your ticketing needs to cover.
In this course, we help you decide how passengers will pay. Course 6 helps you work through what passengers are told, and Course 7 brings the systems together. Course 8 then helps you prepare those requirements for procurement.
Course 5 is core to franchising and Enhanced Partnerships. In both cases, your Authority specifies and pays for the ticketing service. If you're improving services under your existing local transport plan, the course still applies, with a narrower scope.
Courses 1, 3, 6 and 9 can support your Authority whichever delivery route you choose. If you haven't decided yet, talk to us. We can help you work out how these courses fit your plans.