Passenger’s app platform drives continued success for Reading Buses Group

Reading Buses has extended its app and website licence with Passenger for a third term. As Britain’s leading digital transport services provider, the organisations look forward to continued partnership driving even more innovation for bus users in Reading and the wider Thames Valley region.

Passenger’s platform has been a resounding success for Reading Buses, with a consistently high user rating of 4.7/5 stars in the app stores and strong website traffic. Hundreds of thousands use it to plan their journeys, check out live service updates, and stay on top of what they’ve been charged by tapping on and tapping off with their bank card.

Passenger’s specialist technology powers all of the Reading Buses group’s local bus services, including Newbury & District, Thames Valley and Windsor Express bringing consistency to the customer experience throughout the wider network.

“Reading Buses is delighted to extend with Passenger”, comments Robert Williams, Chief Executive Officer at Reading Buses. “Passenger are experts in their field”, he continues. “The quality and reliability of information has underpinned our customers’ trust in our services.”

“This year, Reading Buses was one of the first operators in the UK to use NeTEx data in its app, to provide customers with fare information as an integrated part of their journey planning experience. This will become increasingly important if and when the £2 government fare cap ends to break down barriers to trying the bus for the first time”, adds Robert.

The partnership began in 2017 following Passenger’s acquisition of software company Netescape. The Brighton-based developers created one of the first bus operator website management tools on the market.

Reading Buses has embraced a series of major platform enhancements since its last renewal in 2021. In the summer of 2023, Reading launched Passenger’s Contactless Journeys capability, which has enabled customers to stay on top of their spending using contactless tap-on and tap-off following its launch in Reading.

With Contactless Journeys, customers simply and securely register their card in the app, and then they’re free to monitor their spending in real-time. With the ability to track progress against caps — activated right in time for Reading’s TOTO launch — they have more info than ever to guide their travel decisions. This feature even works with caps that cover different zones or run across parallel time periods – making it simultaneous and seamless.

In Feb 2024, Reading Buses was one of seven launch partners for Passenger’s industry-first capability to show bus fares in journey planning results, using NeTEx data. The data format, mandated by the Department for Transport as part of its Bus Open Data Service programme, was already being produced by the team at Reading. Working closely with Passenger, this data became useful within its own customer experience, helping customers to work out their fare before travelling across the network.

Bracknell-based Thames Valley Buses added Passenger’s verification service to its highly regarded mobile ticketing app in Autumn 2022, as part of a five-month trial to tackle fraudulent ticket use.

Known as Courtney Buses until shortly after it was acquired by Reading Buses in 2019, the Thames Valley Buses team rolled out verifications across its young person ticket range, Boost. Boost products are for Under 19’s and 19-21 year olds in full time education at a local college or university.

The trial results made it easy for Reading Buses, its parent company, to adopt the solution network-wide.

Helen Connolly, Director of Customer Success at Passenger comments, “We’re delighted to extend our collaboration with Reading. The team are always engaged and a genuine pleasure to work with. As the industry and customers’ needs evolve, I’m excited that we’ll continue working to make bus travel more accessible together.”