Cubic Corporation designs, integrates and operates systems, products and services focused in the transportation, defense training and secure communications markets. Its transport division, CTS, integrates payment and information technology and services to create intelligent travel solutions for transportation authorities and operators.
The company claims that it has submitted a proposal, titled ‘FasTrak Gateless Gateline,’ to the Railway Standards and Safety Board’s (RSSB) ‘Future Ticketing Detection’ competition is currently being developed at the Cubic Innovation Centre in London. Cubic states that it is one of the three entrants selected by the RSSB to receive funding from the British government to develop a prototype of the proposed solution.
What is ‘Future Ticketing Detection’?
Cubic claims that RSSB has created the “Future Ticket Detection” competition to explore new ideas for managing crowds in train stations, monitoring crowd density and directing crowd flow, with the goals of improving passenger safety and security, and protecting revenues for operators.
How will the technology work?
According to the company, FasTrak uses several advanced technologies to seamlessly detect passenger tickets which allows them to walk normally through fare gates without compromising the operator’s revenue protection. FasTrak will also ensure revenues are collected for their services through an enhanced and secure technology platform providing a simpler means of identifying and apprehending fare evaders.
Roger Crow, Executive Vice President and Managing Director, Cubic Transportation Systems Europe, said:
“Based on our heritage of building and maintaining the hardware, systems and infrastructure for revenue collection, Cubic recognized the need to embrace a wide range of new technologies – some proven, some emerging – that together will transform the traveler experience. This project is another example of Cubic’s partner collaborations to find innovative solutions and deliver benefits for travelers and operators alike.”
Partners
Go Ahead Group, Movement Strategies, Maynard Group and Bristol Robotics Laboratory have partnered with Cubic to develop a concept demonstrator based on the existing advanced ticket detection technologies that can be integrated into a single gate-less system. As per the partners, the detection method, which eliminates the physical barrier of the gate has the potential to double passenger throughput.
Neil Webster, Innovation Program director, RSSB said, “Improving customer experience is a key challenge in the Rail Technical Strategy, and this competition, part-funded by RSSB, enables the industry to come together to find innovative solutions to address this. Advanced ticket detection technologies have a major part to play in how stations are run in the future.”
