13 June 2024 – BKK expands its ticket validation options in the next phase of its fare evasion campaign. In several phases from June, 2024, BKK Centre for Budapest Transport will display code stickers for ticket validation on trams’ driver’s booth and next to ticket validators on suburban railways, in order each and every passenger could have the chance to scan their tickets in time. By the end of July, besides buses and trolleybuses, validation of mobile tickets in the passenger area of every surface vehicle type will have been available uniformly.
The controlled expansion of internal code stickers could boost willingness to ticket validation, as BKK Centre for Budapest Transport made this conclusion, by analysing customer feedback and the results of customer satisfaction-related research. Therefore, the transport company makes ticket validation options available onboard the trams and suburban railway lines from 13 June in several phases.
No impact on pass holders, easier validation for occasional ticket holders
On the side of the driver booth on the rear and front side of trams, one code sticker each supplied also with NFC sticker, while per suburban railway cars, two code stickers each supplied with NFC stickers will be displayed, thus ticket validation will be easy and quick also in their passenger area . According to the company’s plans, by the end of July, this option will have been available uniformly on Budapest’s entire surface vehicle fleet.
The newly-displayed code stickers can be used similarly to other code stickers, either with the one-step ticket validation (NFC ticket validation process) or with the well-accustomed camera-based code-scanning method. The transport company would like to kindly recommend that passengers validate their digital tickets ready for validation upon boarding.
These stickers must be used onboard trams and suburban railways, only in case of occasional tickets, as pass holders are obliged to show their pass only during ticket inspection.
No excuse upon fare evasion
BKK tested the internal ticket validation option throughout the summer of 2022: code stickers were displayed on the internal side of every door in the passenger area of tramlines 4 and 6.
In the test phase, BKK experienced that code sticker displayed on the internal side of doors could lead to abuse, as there were passengers who validated their tickets only when ticket inspectors appeared onboard.
However, the company is further doing its best to increase customer experience and to ease ticket validation, therefore examined the display of internal code stickers in case of trams and suburban railway. Code stickers for ticket validation is displayed on trams’ driver booth, similarly to buses and trolleybuses, and next to ticket validators in suburban railway cars.
This is the company’s second customer-friendly measure in its fare evasion program in a short time, which aims to boost willingness to ticket purchase and validation. On the entire day on 12 May, ticket inspectors only checked passengers’ ticket entitlement but they did not impose fines on passengers. With this measure, the company wished to draw passengers’ attention to the fact that it is our common interest and part of the transport culture that every single passenger pays for public transport services.
Due to easy accessibility and increasing validation-related options, digital tickets usually decrease willingness to fare evasion as well as social acceptance of fare evasion and BKK’s fare evasion campaigns supports this process.
Increasing number of digital passes and tickets
The popularity of BKK’s BudapestGO app keeps increasing. Thanks to the company’s developments, approximately 26% of revenues generated from ticket and pass sales comes from digital tickets and passes. Almost 40% of adult-based passes and approximately 50% of student-based passes are used by passengers on their phone.
Besides passes, the new digital product, also the block of ten tickets newly-introduced in the BudapestGO app is popular among BKK’s customers: BKK sold over 30,000 digital block of ten tickets in the first month, while in total every fifth block of ten tickets was purchased via mobile phone during this period.
BKK aims to make passengers’ life even easier with further comfort functions and increasing digital services and to boost the ratio of sustainable digital tickets in ticket purchasing
