TravelMaster Interim Tickets – For Employers, Business and Organisations Supporting Key Workers

2nd April 2020

TravelMaster wants to make it easier for the region’s employers to provide key workers with essential travel at this challenging time by making interim versions of our tickets available in bulk.

What are ‘Interim Tickets’?

TravelMaster’s ‘Interim tickets’ are printed versions of our normal tickets with a fixed end date (not limited to 1-Day, 7-Day or 28-Day).

They could be a CityWide valid until the 30th April, for example, or an SYConnect valid until 31st June.

They will be printed in bulk to give an employer, or any organisation seeking to fund essential travel, the ability to issue key workers with transport during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why are they being introduced?

TravelMaster are introducing these interim versions of tickets for a number of reasons:

We want to make it as easy as possible for key workers who need to use public transport to do so and reduce the need for them to sort out their own tickets at an already stressful and challenging time.

It is currently difficult for us to issue smart tickets in bulk to organisations. We do have a system in development for this but that wasn’t due to be deployed until June – in the interim these printed cards will help meet that need and due to the unprecedented situation our need for smart data is reduced.

Some customers are only partially using passes they have paid for and we are unable to refund these. We are extending those purchased before 01 April 2020 but after this point they will be bought at their own risk. Our interim tickets will instead put the financial cost onto an employer, rather than the employee, so an individual shouldn’t lose out financially if they need to self-isolate.

These interim tickets will reduce the need for customers to purchase on board and reduce the risk of infection for them and for frontline staff.

Tickets will also ensure a more stable revenue stream for operators in an increasingly challenging environment and let us support the continued delivery of the network for key workers.

How will they work?

Interim versions of our tickets carry the same validity as our current range; they’re just a more flexible way of delivering them to end-users – so an interim CityWide will be valid on all buses and trams as they are already.

They are only available to organisations/employers, and not to individuals directly, who will fund them on behalf of the end user.

The process is simple:

An employer/organisation wanting to provide/fund essential travel for key workers using public transport contacts TravelMaster using interimtickets@sytravelmaster.com or enquiries@sytravelmaster.com.

They will need to provide:

The number of transport users they want to provide travel for;
The duration they want to provide travel for; and,
The type of validity they want to provide (e.g all buses in Rotherham).
We will provide the employer/organisation with a quote based on a pro-rata day rate calculated from our 28-Day pricing and applying discounts where we can.

For example:

An organisation wants to fund travel for 50 key workers on buses and trams in Sheffield until the end of April. We quote based on 30 days travel at a CityWide day rate of £2.34 (with no discount) resulting in a cost of £3,514.29 to the organisation.
Alternatively an employer wants to fund 300 key workers on buses in Rotherham until the end of June. We quote based on 61 days use and in this case opt to apply a discounted RConnect day rate of £2.09 resulting in a cost of £42,416.79 to the employer.
We would then arrange a flexible payment plan to fund these tickets.

The interim tickets will be printed and distributed directly to the organisation/employer who will then issue them directly to key-workers. Those key workers can then travel across the network without worrying about losing days of validity or what service they use.

We will then allocate the revenue from our interim tickets to the region’s operators as soon as practicable, and faster than our standard sales, to provide them with vital cashflow as they continue to provide key services to the region’s key workers.

How long will they be around?

As the name implies we only intend for these types of ticket to be around for a short time as we do not generally support non-smart versions of our tickets.

We do have development ongoing with our online store which will enable organisations to issue ‘discount codes’ for customers and fund tickets that way but until this is deployed, or until the COVID-19 situation is resolved, these interim tickets will be available for organisations to procure for key-workers.

At the minute we are unlikely to issue any with an expiry date beyond June/July.