The pandemic has turned people’s travel habits upside down. Passengers are demanding ticket options that are better adapted to the new way of everyday life. Recognising this need, FARA with Vestfold and Telemark were therefore keen to launch a new app to meet this requirement.
With the new BestPrice concept, passengers do not have to plan their travels in advance. The customer buys a ticket before each trip and the algorithms in the app will calculate what they should pay for the journey based on their travel pattern. The more one travels, the more discount the individual will achieve by reaching different levels.
The levels correspond to a 24-hour ticket, 7-day ticket, 30-day ticket and 180-day ticket, and the app ensures that the passenger never pays more than these fixed fares. It also means that passengers no longer need to pre-purchase a season ticket to take advantage of the discount a season ticket provides. For those who want to continue buying ordinary single tickets and season tickets, this will also be available in the app.
Entur will also be a partner in the collaboration. Entur is a state-owned company that is competition-neutral and will streamline the use of resources and offer public transport basic services within travel planning and ticketing. In this project, FARA will, amongst other things, collect data for the travel planner from Entur, and the BestPrice concept will use the calculation engine that Entur will develop.
“We are very pleased to have FARA and Entur on this project. The new app will change how our customers plan and buy tickets for buses and ferries in our county”, says Bjørn G. Aasebø, Team Leader for Team Marketing and Development, in the Public Transport and and Mobility section in Vestfold and Telemark county municipality.
“It is important to make it easier for more people to travel by public transport in the future and therefore it is very important to put in place a more flexible payment solution that is better adapted to the new everyday life than today’s apps.” Adds Bjørn G. Aasebø.
The app delivered by FARA will also contain Real-Time Information (RTI) – the app shows where the bus is located live on maps and it will also include a separate module for students who have a school card. It will also be expanded to combine buses with other mobility alternatives such as CityBicycle (Bysykkel).
“We are very pleased that Vestfold and Telemark are renewing their collaboration with us and that we will have the opportunity to build the next generation of ticketing systems together with one of the country’s most innovative administrations. At the same time, this demonstrates to other counties that there are alternatives to costly in-house development and management of such solutions.” concludes Stig Rønning, VP Products for FARA.