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While most major cities have planned complete transport networks, London's evolved organically over 150 years. But in the mid-90s, London Transport - now Transport for London (TfL) - decided to develop an integrated ticketing and revenue system for all of its buses and Underground routes.
The project, named PRESTIGE (Procurement of Revenue Services Ticketing, Information, Gates and Electronics), was awarded to TranSys Consortium, whose principal partners are EDS and Cubic Transportation Systems. TranSys had to design and build a system that met strict health and safety requirements and supported a complex, zone-based pricing structure while dealing with limitations such as 19th-centuryticket halls listed as heritage sites.
The Oyster smartcard is the jewel in the crown of a £1.2 billion integrated ticketing system designed, implemented, managed and marketed by TranSys in partnership with TfL. It takes less than a fifth of a second for an Oyster card to be read and the...