Conduent Transportation has implemented the first phase of its next-generation fare collection system across the De Lijn public transportation network in the Flanders region of Belgium.
Roger Kesteloot, director general at De Lijn, says: “Conduent’s new system has enabled De Lijn to become the first in Belgium to launch contactless payment on public transport and offer our customers a new, convenient and hygienic payment option.”
Conduent says the first phase of the project allows people to use contactless bank cards based on the cEMV (contactless Europay, MasterCard and Visa) mass transit transaction model 2 on trams and trambuses while buses will follow at a later date.
The system will deploy up to 10,000 terminals on buses and trams across Flanders, the company adds.
De Lijn is the Flemish region's partner for urban and regional transport, serving approximately 6.5 million residents.
It runs the Antwerp, Ghent and Coastal tram networks while also outsourcing bus services to operators.
The public transport operator also offers sustainable mobility options through partnerships with the Cambio car-sharing service and a bike-sharing company called Blue-bike.
Mark Brewer, president, global public sector solutions at Conduent, says: “In light of Covid-19 and health concerns, contactless fare collection systems have become a beneficial tool transportation operators can use to help maintain a safe environment for their passengers.”
For the second phase of the project, Conduent will work with De Lijn to add account-based ticketing to its Atlas Ops fare collection system.
According to Conduent, this will allow the ticket to be stored on the cloud instead of a smartphone or smartcard while also enabling a range of media to be linked via the cloud to the passenger's account in the back office.
The company claims Atlas Ops allows users to buy tickets or subscriptions or receive real-time travel updates from a single point of access without needing to switch between different systems to organise a multimodal journey.
In June, Conduent won a contract to deploy Atlas Ops across the French city of Lyon's bus, tram and network.
