London Underground Oyster

Transport for London’s Oyster® Card system, the most sophisticated regional and multimodal automated fare payment and revenue management system in the world, relies on infrastructure designed, supplied and supported by Cubic. With more than 29 million cards in circulation, London’s highly acclaimed Oyster contactless smart card is now the most widely circulated smart card in Europe. As a leader in the TranSys consortium, Cubic designed, developed and installed the extensive Oyster Card system for London’s Underground and buses. Jackman Enterprises was part of the initial project team and managed the design and introduction of the touch screen multi-fare machine across the underground network.

The Oyster card system is one of the most widely used mass transit ticketing systems worldwide and is iconic to Londoners who use it daily. Jackman Enterprises was lucky enough to be involved in this project at the very start, forming part of the Cubic management team within the Transys consortium. The assignment centred on the development and roll out of the multifare machine. The principal upgrade was to replace the matrix of physical switches, one per station, with the now very familiar touchscreen. This was at a time when touchscreens were not used in mass passenger environments and therefore various challenges of introduction of this technology to the public had to be addressed. Part of this was running focus groups with passengers and use their feedback to design the touchscreen graphics. Regular users of the Underground will know that these graphics are extremely functional and have hardly changed in the 15 years since their inception.

JACKMAN ENTERPRISES WAS USED ON THE PROJECT TO FORM PART OF THE MANAGEMENT TEAM. DUNCAN BROUGHT A SPIRIT OF ‘CAN DO’ THAT WAS ESSENTIAL AT THE OUTSTART OF THIS MASSIVE PROJECT. DUNCAN HAS THE ABILITY TO BRIDGE THE DIVIDE BETWEEN THE TECHNICAL EXPERTS AND THE PROJECT DELIVERY TEAM AND WAS WELL RESPECTED IN BOTH CAMPS FOR HIS APPROACH.