Electronic Payments in Ostrava´s Public Transport are Becoming More and More Popular

Electronic tickets are more popular than paper tickets in Ostrava. For the first time since their launch in 2016, their number and financial value exceeded the sale of single paper tickets.

Only in December 2018, passengers used their cards almost 471,000 times. The Ostrava Transport Company (DPO) expects the electronic fare payments to further increase in 2019. Statistics show that their use doubles every year. While in the second half of 2016 there were half a million payments, in 2018 the number increased to 3.8 million.  At the end of 2018, the number of electronic payments for a single fare exceeded the sales of paper tickets for the first time.

Therefore, the DPO plans to stop using the paper tickets next year on 1 January 2020. The possibility to pay with cash will not disappear altogether, because paper tickets will be replaced by the new “credit pass”, which will be available from September at all main stops. The printing, sale and maintenance of the entire paper ticket system costs about CZK 20 million per year. The cost of credit passes is estimated at several million koruna. This means that the total DPO’s savings will reach CZK 15 million a year, which is, for example, more than one new electric bus.

Ostrava was the second city in the world (after London) to introduce the electronic fare payment system.