NextCity: New travel app 'wakes Londoners up early if there are travel problems'

The app is created by the inventors of the Oyster Card
Matt Buck/Flickr/Creative Commons licence CC BY-SA 2.0
Mark Blunden @_MarkBlunden14 December 2015

The inventors of the Oyster card are developing an “intelligent travel” system that could wake London commuters early if there are travel problems.

The NextCity project by fare and ticketing giant Cubic Transportation Systems is one of the ideas that will be worked on at its innovation centre in Clerkenwell, due to open tomorrow.

NextCity will be a “single account” covering trains, roads, bikes and pedestrians — with rewards for people taking the most eco-friendly routes.

It uses millions of pieces of currently unconnected data — from road conditions to bicycle availability — to optimise travel and reduce congestion.

Cubic has a £660 million, 10-year contract with Transport for London to run and maintain fare collection.

NextCity goes further than apps such as Citymapper by analysing a person’s choices, such as whether they need a seat or have a deadline.

The data will probably be delivered through an app, with a bus-full of people stuck in traffic each getting a different message for a preferred route tailored to their lifestyle and choices.

Martin Howell, Cubic’s director of external affairs, said: “To get the maximum from this system you need to give up some information, for example, where you get on and off a bus.”

He added: “We can tell people that there might not be a problem yet but by the time you normally travel there will be. Why don’t you get up 20 minutes early, but you won’t need to set an alarm because it will wake you up to tell you: ‘Get the bus in 40 minutes, change halfway, get another bus’.”

And he said: “There’s no reason you couldn’t get, for example, an iTunes voucher or money off your next journey, if you do something that helps the city and helps you.”

Cubic is also trialling Britain’s first talking ticket machine with rail firm Abellio at Stansted. Next Agent greets travellers with a multilingual “human” assistant on an HD screen.

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