Investigation of e-ticketing service adoption in public transportation

Passengers and transport operators alike are demanding effortless payment options that maximize travel fluidity. E-Ticketing in public transportation, which has been growing in the last decades, is a payment methodology with the goal to achieve travel fluidity. Today, almost all bigger transit fare payment systems around the world use contactless smart cards as the primary ticket medium. VöV, the Swiss branch for public transportation, is about to launch an e-ticketing service based on a smart card in Switzerland. However a clear and common understanding about smart cards and the user acceptance in this area is still missing. Therefore, the main goal of this study is finding the critical success factors among customer groups for the implementation of a smart card in public transportation. For achieving this goal, an exploratory/descriptive and qualitative study is conducted. The literature review resulted in identification of several used technologies in e-ticketing for public transportation as well as the identification of relevant Information Systems Technologies. The result of this study can be helpful to give a clear understanding about the important factors of a successful e-ticketing (smart card) implementation in the Swiss public transportation.