Lost your OV chip card or insufficient credit on your card: there is good news for every traveler who has experienced this. Because in a while an app on your phone will replace the public transport card. The great thing is: you only have to sit down, because the app checks in and out itself. Travelers on two bus lines in Eindhoven can be the first to try it from next month.
Traveling with a smartphone instead of the public transport card has been possible for some places in the Netherlands for some time: you don’t get the pass, but your phone past the check-in pole. Bus company Hermes in Eindhoven goes one step further: with the Mobyyou app you don’t even have to take your phone out of your pocket, because checking in and out is automatic.
“A personal encrypting connection is made between the bus and your telephone,” explains Jeroen Pietryga of Mobyyou. “It’s a kind of elastic. As soon as you get off the bus, the distance between the bus and the phone increases, causing that elastic to snap. Then the connection is broken and you are automatically checked out.”
In Eindhoven, travelers of bus lines 407 and 408 (between Eindhoven Central and the High Tech Campus) can test the app. Bus operator Hermes does not yet know when it will be the turn of other bus lines. “We don’t want to commit ourselves to fast entry, but take the time we need to properly roll out this service. In the coming period, we will listen very carefully to travelers, drivers and other stakeholders. And then we hope to be able to expand to all buses in Brabant soon, of course in consultation with our client and other carriers,” says Jonne van Eck, Hermes spokesperson.
The intention is that the public transport chip card as we know it now – a yellow or blue card on which you can deposit money to pay for a bus or train journey – will disappear by the end of 2023. There will be a new card in return and you can travel with a bank card or app, is the idea of Translink – the company behind the OV chip card.