State of the Art Analysis: Buying Single Tickets

My State of the Art Analysis handles the part of the ticket system where you travel occationally and not frequently enough to buy e.g a monthly card and instead uses single tickets. This is relevant for our task description since we are talking about creating a project that changes SL's paying system, based on the inconvenience that is today.

If you are a short-time visitor in Stockholm, who only wishes to travel a few times, the travelling and paying system might be confusing at first. There are several ways to pay for your tickets in Stockholm today. Regular travellers usually find ways of how to pay for their travels by monthly or yearly passes, but for sporadic travellers, the choices are many.

The most convenient way might be to go to the ticket vendor to buy a single ticket. The ticket vending machine is also a way to buy a ticket, as well as the mobile application, or by text message. The cheapest way, though, is often to go to one of SL’s retailers, who often sells the tickets for a cheaper price. The retailers could be small kiosks, newsagents or hotels.

To buy the correct single ticket, you also need to know how far you are travelling, since travelling through the different zones of Stockholm affects the ticket price. Some routes even requires more than one ticket. Once a ticket is used it lasts for 75 minutes, and there is today no limit for how many tickets you have to use in one day. If you e.g. travel to and from work, you will need two different tickets.

The varying prices for single tickets, T-Centralen to Slussen:

• Single ticket with SL Access Card: 25 SEK (requires an Access Card for 20 SEK plus a minimum purchase of 100 SEK)
• Single ticket using SL’s app, text message or ticket vending machine: 36 SEK
• Ticket vendor or conductor: 44 SEK

The only way to get the cheapest tickets for people travelling seldom today is by buying an Access Card, which requires that you travel at least four times to earn the money back. This means, not even using your phone to get a tickets gives you any advantage over going to the vending machine for example.

Today you have to pay more for the convenience of having the tickets purchased on your smartphone compared to using the Access Card. To buy multiple tickets, you must use the Access Card. Because of the price difference (at least 11 SEK per ticket) it may not encourage more people to use modern tools like the SL smartphone app to buy the tickets.

Based on the data gathered in this analysis, we are able to develop our ideas and establish the constrains and requirements that are necessary for us to move forward and improve the usability.