There is an increasing use of either contact or contact-less smartcards in cities for the payment of public transport and access to other public services.

TfL and London introduced the Oystercard for payment on the bus and tube networks, and the Department of Transport has supported the development of ITSO for public transport payment in the UK. The concessionary fare scheme for buses has led to the widespread deployment of ITSO compliant cards within the UK.

Smartcards are increasingly being used by Local Authorities for identification, access and payment for public services such as libraries, leisure facilities, school catering and parking.

As the use of smartcards becomes more widespread there is an increase in their use for parking payment and or access to card parks.

For users this means that there is no longer a requirement to ensure that they have sufficient change and often receive a discounted parking fee for using the smartcard based payment method.

For car park operators this removes the costs associated with the handling of cash and provides a greater insight into both the utilisation of car parking capacity and behaviour of users which can be used to improve operational efficiency.

Encouraging cycle use in city centres is seen by many cities as a way of reducing congestion, improving air quality and as a result the health of citizens.

A number of cities have tried to introduce bike hire schemes, but in the early days these schemes failed due to inconvenient and too few bike station locations, incorrect commercial models, poor maintenance, bike theft and vandalism.

However with the maturity of both RFID and Smartcard technology, there have been successful implementations of schemes, the largest, currently being Velib in Paris which has over 1000 bike stations across the city and over 20,000 bikes.

The widespread publicity of the success of the scheme in Paris, has lead to a number of cities including London to commit to introducing Bike Hire Schemes.

Electronic Vehicle Identification (EVI) - is defined as an electronic device that allows the unique, remote and reliable communication of identifying parameters of the vehicle. It comprises an in-vehicle data storage element, suitable interfaces and a vehicle-to-infrastructure data communication element.

Currently the only method of remotely identifying the identity of a vehicle is via its Vehicle Registration Mark (VRM) often through the use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR).

As the number of automated enforcement systems that rely on the VRM increases then the gains that can be achieved through the altering or the changing of licence plates increases.

The countermeasures against ANPR are well known and widely available and EVI is often offered as the solution.

There have been a number of European and National studies into the feasibility of EVI, the main issue is the mechanism to deploy EVI across the entire vehicle fleet. To date the only national deployment of EVI has been in Bermuda.

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