Denmark’s e-ticketing goes national

Electronic tickets can now be used throughout Denmark for all public transport.

However the Rejsekort system is still causing difficulties several years after it was rolled out at a regional level. Local governments say that it is too expensive to implement and travellers are complaining that it is not working properly. Checking e-tickets appears to be causing problems, and many passengers criticise it for being more expensive, especially for commuters, than using the old discount tickets.

The system being used by Rejsekort , a group of Denmark’s public transport companies, has been plagued by delays and difficulties from its inception. The initial value of the 2005 contract, awarded to the EastWest Consortium headed by Thales and Accenture, was €200 million but it has cost about three times to implement so far. The full national roll-out should have been completed in 2009.

The same e-ticking system has been used in other European countries (France, UK and the Netherlands) and various Asian cities (New Delhi, Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong). It requires swiping the e-ticket at the beginning and the end of a journey and credit is deducted from the card accordingly. Credit may be added to cards at a variety of points.

Thales, a French multinational, works in the fields of aerospace, defence, security and transport.