Passengers embrace transport revolution
TRANSPORT BOSSES have released new figures that underline the scale of the digital revolution taking place on buses and trains in West Yorkshire.
Passengers in the county are now using MCard travel smartcards to make journeys worth about £30m each year, the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) revealed yesterday.
About 50 people every day are also downloading the free MCard app that allows travel tickets to be purchased from any Android smartphone.
The app has been used to buy more than £850,000 of bus and train travel since its launch last year.
And, in another sign of the tech-savvy approach that people are taking to their public transport in 2018, the number of bus timetables being downloaded each month from the county’s Metro website has now passed the 600,000 mark.
The figures were issued by the WYCA to coincide with the start of this year’s Leeds Digital Festival.
A spokesperson for the authority said: “Leeds City Region is at the heart of emerging digital, mechanical and financial technologies, and the growing figures showing the use of MCard smartcards for travel, of the MCard and other apps, timetable downloads and contactless payments show that West Yorkshire’s transport network is undergoing a digital revolution which passengers are embracing.”
The WYCA says the MCard – introduced in 2014 and modelled on London’s Oyster card – is “one of the largest and most successful” schemes of its kind in the country.
People can load the cards with travel products including weekly tickets and day savers before using them to tap their way onto a bus or through a train station’s ticket gates.
The Leeds Digital Festival began yesterday and runs until April 27.