At Transport Ticketing Global (TTG), one message came through clearly: if public transport is to thrive, it has to work better for the people who use it. Whether you hold an authority, operator or vendor role – procuring, designing or delivering systems – there’s only one measure of success that matters: does it work for the passenger?

Technology gets in the way of customer-first thinking

What do ABT, cEMV, PAYG and MaaS all have in common? They are acronyms the industry is obsessed with – and yet they all mean absolutely nothing to passengers.

At the TTG conference this year, we heard – from Carrie Hotton-MacDonald, Transit Director at Edmonton Transit Service, and Emma Handby, Head of Customer Services at Liverpool City Region Combined Authority – that transport users simply don’t care about the technology, or the “how” of systems. They reserve their approval for public transport that’s reliable, clean, safe, simple to use – and just works.

They don’t care about interoperability or integrations – but they’re (maybe on a subconscious level) mildly impressed when they can get to where they want to be without stress.

While the acronyms and jargon might seem very important in the world of transport solution design, innovation isn’t cause for celebration unless it brings real value to the people that use it.

Looking around the exhibition floor, and listening to the conference, it’s clear that a lack of innovation isn’t a problem for our industry. We’re building smarter systems than ever, which nail the complexities of multi-token acceptance, multi-operator and multimodal schemes, and intelligent data layers.

The capability is extraordinary, and yet the experience of public transport in cities and regions around the world still often falls short.

That gap isn’t caused by technology, but by mindset. Too often, we begin with the platform – what we’re procuring, designing, integrating, or deploying – rather than the problems we’re trying to solve. That means we’re failing right off the bat.

That’s why this year at TTG the Vix and Kuba teams stripped back our exhibition space, avoiding the temptation to show-off our solutions, and instead focused on listening. We wanted to give the floor to operators and authorities to tell us about their problems and priorities, and explore what really matters to their passengers. 

It’s in understanding real, on-the-ground issues that we can design solutions that really give passengers what they want. Solutions that don’t over-blow their own importance, or cloud their purpose with jargon, but instead are happy to fade into the background and let experience take centre stage.

Speaking to people on our stand and listening to the conference, we felt this message resonated with the TTG crowd. There seems to be a growing recognition that the future of transport won’t be shaped by those who build the most advanced systems, but by those who understand passenger problems best, and who invest energy into solving them.

6 takeaways from TTG

Based on our conversations with operators and authorities, here are some lessons we’re taking away.

1. Start with the problem

There’s a moment, early in transport programmes, where the trajectory is set, priorities are defined, and requirements begin to take shape. If that moment is dominated by the detail of the solution, everything else starts to orbit around it.

Decisions become about delivery, not outcomes. Trade-offs are made based on system capability, not passenger needs. We were pleased to hear some of the voices at TTG pushing back – urging the industry to define problems first, before specifying solutions and entering into procurement processes.

It’s a simple idea, but a difficult discipline to maintain in practice. It involves considering the problems long enough to properly understand them: where the friction sits, why adoption doesn’t naturally follow innovation, and why passenger journeys don’t quite work.

2. Passengers don’t notice systems

One of the most important shifts we noticed at this year’s TTG is a subtle change in perspective. For years, the industry has designed transport networks around systems – ticketing systems, payment systems, validation systems. We’ve optimised flows, reduced transaction times, improved back-office performance.

But the reality is that passengers don’t experience any of that. As Emma Handby brilliantly said:

"Customers don’t think about systems, they think about moments. Moments like tapping their card and getting on the bus – when it just works."

That distinction matters. Because a system can be “best-in-class” and still create doubt. It can be technically elegant and still feel confusing to the user. In public transport, those moments carry a lot of weight – leaving a lasting impression that either encourages or discourages a passenger to use those services again.

3. Capability doesn’t equal passenger confidence

Following this customer-first line of thinking, journeys break down when passenger confidence fails, or when passenger trust is broken. It’s not always about whether the system works; it could be about whether the passenger feels confident using it.

Uncertainty shows up everywhere on passenger journeys: Am I buying the right ticket? Is this the cheapest option? What happens if I get it wrong? The right technology can do a lot to ease the points of friction that make public transport feel harder than it should.

One of the most memorable ideas we took away from TTG was about the importance of the elimination of stress, which trumps innovation for innovation’s sake. As Emma Handby said:

“The biggest win is removing anxiety, not selling features”.

This is where passenger focus really comes into its own. Not in adding new capabilities, but in stripping away the things that create doubt – through things like clear pricing, predictability, and consistent, easy interactions. Confidence, in this context, is a design outcome.

4. Keep complexity hidden – let passengers feel simplicity

To the product owners and solutions architects reading this post, we’re not underestimating the vital work that goes into building systems, enabling integrations, rising to technical challenges, and rolling out technological “firsts”. It's what's really transformed our industry in the last decade.

The innovation our industry has driven to answer persistent problems – making multi-operator, multimodal, interoperability a reality – is incredible. We’ve overcome a raft of challenges including regional governance, legacy infrastructure and evolving policy landscapes.

We’ve torn up the rulebook that said ticketing systems must be built as monolithic solutions, locked-in by single vendors. We’ve set our sights on a new era of flexibility, modularity, openness and payment choice. 

However, as our conversations at TTG highlighted, from the passenger’s perspective, all the complexity beneath the surface of the systems they use doesn’t matter. They experience the network as one system, operator boundaries mean nothing, and the technology that makes journeys feel easier is irrelevant.

All they care about is effortlessness – the inconspicuousness of technology is a win! As our CEO, Aaron Ross, said in his fireside chat with Carrie-Hotton MacDonald:

"For us product names and the technology we use are really important. For passengers, none of that cuts through. What the technology does and how they experience it is really important."

So, while we all know simplicity doesn’t happen by accident, it’s that more than anything that has to be actively protected – through design, governance, and a shared understanding of what the passenger experience should feel like.

5. Customer focus isn’t new, but it matters now

Passenger focus in transport isn’t a groundbreaking idea. But its importance is changing.

The expectations of passengers are shaped elsewhere. As we heard from Thea Fisher, Head of Urban Mobility at Visa, that includes their everyday retail payment experiences:

"Effortless, predictable, low-friction interactions across the retail landscape are no longer a differentiator; they’re the baseline."

Public transport has a lot of heavy lifting to do in our modern societies. It is being asked to do more than get people from A to B – it must play a critical role in breaking the habit of car use, contributing to sustainability goals, supporting economic growth, and connecting communities more effectively.

Against this backdrop, a simple passenger experience is increasingly important. None of these big picture goals are achievable if journeys feel complicated and people opt out. If they have a car, they’ll use it. In some cases, they’ll miss out on opportunities and social connection when transport doesn’t deliver.

6. We don’t need more revolution – we do need realisation

By really listening at TTG – to authorities, operators and our industry peers – we came away more certain than ever of these core beliefs:

• Customer-first thinking must drive decision making

• Design must focus on ease of use and removing stress

• Simplicity is harder, and more important, the more we integrate

• Consistency and reliability often matter more than choice

• Governance shapes experience as much as technology

• Data is only useful if it changes what we do

• The best technology is the kind that's invisible

Less focus on tech, more on people

With TTG’s exhibition space once again chock full of hardware and software demonstrations – it’s clear that the transport industry doesn’t need more technology.

The real risk isn’t that we fail to innovate, it’s that we become too attached to the idea of solving problems that matter to systems, rather than problems that matter to people.

Technology without ego is about starting with the problem, staying with it perhaps longer than feels comfortable, understanding it well enough that the solution becomes obvious.

In the end, the goal isn’t to build better platforms. It’s to make journeys feel effortless.

And the authorities, operators and technology vendors that can work together to do that – consistently, quietly, and without making the technology the hero – are the ones that will shape what comes next.

Want to continue the conversation?

For the Vix team, the conversation doesn't stop here. We want to hear from authorities, operators and technology partners who are invested in understanding the problems of public transport and designing solutions around passenger needs. Get in touch.