Abstract

This thesis investigates the public transport system in the city of Uppsala in Sweden. More specifically the thesis targets the ticketing and payment system. The public transport operator in Uppsala is called UL, which is a brand owned by Region Uppsala, i.e. the County council of Uppsala. UL is run with a non-profit approach and is designed to serve the inhabitants as well as possible. In trying to fulfil this societal purpose the public transport system aims to be efficient, equal for all citizens as well as attractive. Regarding the ticketing and payment system the aim is to make it easy for people to understand and interact with. Overall, UL is working closely with the hypothesis that an increase in journeys with public transport can be obtained by making the ticketing and payment system easier.
This thesis bases itself on the fact that UL currently is planning the development of a new ticketing and payment system. The purpose of the thesis is to help increase the number of journeys travelled with public transport, more specifically by those who occasionally or never travel as of today. To achieve this, the goal of the thesis is to present a vision for how UL’s new payment and ticketing system should be designed. This vision has concepts of interaction design in mind whilst investigating whether a simplified system might increase travel with public transport.
The thesis uses surveys and usability testing of the present-day system. These are targeted towards those who belong to the group of occasional travellers. These studies have resulted in an understanding of the opinions regarding the ticketing and payment system. The opinions can be summarised such that people in general find difficulties in grasping the different fare zones of the public transport system and do therefore experience difficulties in buying the correct ticket for their specific journey. This manifested itself during the usability testing of UL’s smartphone app where most participants were observed to get stuck at buying the correct ticket. The surveys also showed that some travellers think that they would travel more, should the ticketing system be easier to use.
The new ticketing system should consist of a redesigned fare structure which in some sense changes the structure of the fare zones since travellers of all categories are experiencing issues with these today. A complete removal of the fare zones would create perhaps the most intuitive ticketing system since having a UL-ticket automatically would make it valid on every UL-branded mean of transport. In general, a downscaling of the current ticketing system is preferable to avoid confusing travellers.