Integration. Integration. Integration, that's what you need.

Tap & Go is here!

Get your MetroCard, link it to your bank details, and voila!  All you need to board a Merseyrail train  is a tap at the platform validators at the start and finish of your journey.  I've had a card for a couple of months now and I have to say it's transformative.  Wandering up to the barriers at Hamilton Square and simply tapping to get through.  Dabbing on the way out and knowing that the fare will be correctly calculated and capped.  No more queuing.  No more "pay at your destination" when the ticket office staff are on a break.  No more finding the ticket machine on the car park side at Birkenhead North isn't working so you go up and over the bridge to the booking office only to discover someone is trying to plan a journey to Woking via Swansea or something (this has happened and yes I'm still bitter).

It's a marvelous step into the 21st century at last from Merseytravel.  Even more excitingly, you can Tap & Go on buses too:

Oh no, hang on: that's a different Tap & Go.  You don't need a MetroCard for that one; simply use your debit or credit card and it'll go through.  Bus fares are fixed at £2 but if you use the same card the cap will still apply and you won't pay any more than the day pass rate.  It also means you don't have to talk to the driver any more, which is great, because bus drivers are almost always twats.  I've tapped and gone a few times on local buses and it's brilliant.

Oh no, hang on: it's not totally brilliant, because it turns out it only works on one bus company, Arriva, as I discovered yesterday when I futilely hammered my iPhone on the payment slot on a Stagecoach bus.  The driver - who was, in fact, a twat - covered it with his hand and said "We don't do Tap & Go.  What ticket do you want?".  

To recap, then.  If you live in the Merseytravel area and use Stagecoach, you need to ask the driver for a ticket.  If you use Arriva buses, you can tap with a credit or debit card, but not a MetroCard.  If you use Merseyrail, you can tap a MetroCard, but not a credit or debit card.  And none of these methods of payment interact with one another, so if you, say, take an Arriva bus to the station, then a Merseyrail train, then a Stagecoach bus from your destination, none of these will know about each other, so they won't be capped at the price of a Saveaway, so you'll pay over the odds.  I have no idea what the position is with the smaller bus companies, or with the buses that have had a rebrand to the yellow Metro branding and therefore you have no idea what company is running them.  Suffice to say, it's not exactly transparent.

This simply isn't on in 2025.  Liverpool and its environs are a major city region.  It has a good, comprehensive public transport network.  We deserve a payment system that is simple and easy to use.  The MetroCard is one step along the way, but it's a hesitant, tentative step.  I first wrote on this blog about the Walrus card in 2011.  Fourteen years later we've got one of the promised features, at last, at exactly the time the rest of the world has moved on.  Nobody uses Oyster cards in London any more; you tap with your payment card or your phone.  In Helsinki I had an app.  In Amsterdam I had an app.  In Stockholm I had an app.  Whizz the QR code on the reader and I was done.  There is no Tap & Go app as yet.

I understand it's difficult to implement these schemes, and it costs time and money.  I'm once again forced to ask - why don't you talk to the people who've made it work already?  Why not rock up at TfL and say "can we use your software, please?"  

I guess I'm getting a bit old and tired and cynical.  I'm getting a bit tired of Close Friend Of The Blog Mayor Steve Rotheram standing in front of some amazing new transport innovation and it turning out to be a bit rubbish.  The Tap & Go that's limited in scope.  The trains that suffer endless teething problems.  The bendy buses that aren't bendy buses.  The hydrogen buses that we simply won't talk about any more because that's a bit embarrassing.  The station at Baltic that's still not under construction.

I want Merseytravel - or Metro, if that's what it's called now; even the rebranding has been maddeningly done - to work well for its residents and encourage people onto public transport.  Simple, uncomplicated ticketing is one of those key elements, and it's still far off.  Perhaps taking the buses under local control will help.  I hope so.  

(And yeah, it'd be nice if Tap & Go were also available on the many stations within the Merseytravel region that are not on Merseyrail, but I'm trying to be a little bit realistic here.  You can't expect miracles.  That'll probably arrive in about 2087).