The Land Transport Authority of Singapore (LTA) is seeking information from industry for the implementation of a ‘hands free’ Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) system.

2.  Said LTA Chief Executive, Mr Chew Men Leong: “With the advancement of technology, it is timely for us to start exploring a ‘hands free’ AFC system in our public transport system. Our vision for the future is a fare payment system where technology will help us detect and automatically register commuters in a bus or train, so long as the commuter has the fare card somewhere on him. With this, the commuter will enjoy greater convenience and will not need to tap in and out to register his trip on public transport.”

3.  Currently, commuters need to hold a local smart card to travel within public transport. Fares are collected using contactless smart card technology, which are EZ-Link cards and NETs FlashPay cards. In transit, commuters “tap-in” and “tap-out” their cards at the rail station fare gates or bus entry/exit processors for their fares to be calculated.

4.  To harness the technology advancement in this field, LTA is seeking industry’s views on technology, equipment and services necessary to upgrade the current AFC system to support a ‘hands free’ solution that will enable a commuter to take the public transport without the need to tap a fare card on the fare gates or processors in future.

5.  LTA will use the information gathered from this RFI exercise to develop the requirements for a proof-of-concept trial by the end of 2016.

6.  The RFI exercise starts today and will conclude on 29 February 2016.

7.  Interested parties can refer to the Request for Information in GEBIZ http://www.gebiz.gov.sg for more information.