Transport for Wales extends relationship with Passenger

Transport for Wales has extended its contract with Passenger for its TrawsCymru app, an important part of its effort to improve access to bus travel throughout Wales. The Traws Cymru app, launched in 2022, has been a major step in supporting the Welsh Government’s aim of achieving a bus system which better connects communities and contributes toward a more sustainable future.

TrawsCymru is a network of medium and long-distance express bus routes designed to make travelling across Wales as easy as possible. The network runs as far north as Bangor and as far south as Cardiff, with multiple operators covering the network.

Over the last six months, Transport for Wales has adopted Passenger’s verification service to enable access to up to 30% off tickets for under 21-year-olds in conjunction with the national My Travel Pass scheme. This has allowed younger people to enjoy the convenience of buying their tickets on mobile before setting out on their journey — reducing the anxiety that can come from travel planning, especially for new users.

Traws Cymru is also one of the first Passenger customers in Wales to enable its new fare discovery capability, launched early in 2024. Using the EU (CEN) NeTEx data standard that the Welsh Government has adopted for its upcoming Welsh Bus Data Service (WBDS), the capability makes it easy for riders to find out how much their journey on the network will cost before catching the bus. If a valid ticket is available for sale on the app, then riders will be able to buy it and travel immediately.

Passenger’s fare discovery project was the first to use the NeTEx fares dataset, also specified as the preferred fares data format in England’s bus data equivalent, the Bus Open Data Service.

Riders in Wales will benefit from continued access to Passenger’s suite of journey planning capabilities via its app and website, which include mobile ticketing, bus timetables, and live vehicle tracking. Using Passenger’s customer experience platform, the system gives the Transport for Wales team direct control over mobile ticket management and customer support, enabling them to build a high level of customer service as significant investment in the network has continued.

Speaking in the summer of 2023, over a year after launching with Passenger, Mark Jacobs shared his views on working with the team. “I interact quite regularly, actually, with the team at Passenger. I find them very helpful, and I get advice. I don’t always need them, but if I contact them, I always get a quick response. It’s quite a nice experience, to be honest.”

Mark commented about learning the Passenger system, “I find it quite easy to understand. I find the systems easy to understand. I’m able to train others on how to use it. It’s a simple product. It does the job and it’s easy to manage. For customer queries and managing Passenger Cloud, that again, that is easy, as long as I’ve got the customer email, I can search for the customer. I can see exactly what transactions they’ve carried out, and then we can make adjustments, refunds, or gift tickets, whatever we need to do.”

Helen Connolly, Director of Customer Success at Passenger, comments, “We’re delighted to extend our partnership as both Passenger and Transport for Wales seek to make bus travel in Wales more accessible and appealing. The scale of ambition in Wales is huge, and we’re excited to support the team in achieving its important goals in every way we can. Our continued focus on delivering the digital tools that empower them is key to this, as we can see from the positive impact of our verifications service, the new fares feature and the outstanding feedback from the Bus Users accessibility research last year.”

According to Bus Users UK research in April 2023, TrawsCymru and Cardiff Bus achieved the highest overall accessibility scores of 99% in terms of bus app accessibility in Wales. The study reviewed six Welsh apps, with Cardiff and TrawsCymru apps coming from the Passenger stable.

Under the Equalities Act 2010, mobile apps must be accessible and provide all users equal access to services. Commenting on the report’s findings, Barclay Davies, Bus Users UK Director for Wales, said, “Four of the apps we tested achieved accessibility scores above 90%, with three scoring 99%, which was extremely encouraging.”

For further information about TrawsCymru, visit https://traws.cymru/en and for further information about Transport for Wales, visit https://tfw.wales/.