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At the train station of the future, your face could be your ticket and gates could be invisible.



Cubic Transportation Systems, the US company behind London’s Oyster card technology, is working on new ticketing systems that use facial recognition, palm vein scanning and object tracking in a bid to cut down queues.

“The ridership on public transportation is due to grow,” says Dave Roat, strategy manager at Cubic. “How do we deal with the growth in capacity and help enable passenger flow through stations?”


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One of the problems Cubic is trying to solve is the bottleneck that occurs at ticket gates when everyone rushes to dig out their ticket or pass. To avoid this crush, Cubic suggests removing the gates completely. Instead, its prototype system uses an object tracking system to track passengers as they walk through.

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The company has demonstrated a prototype of its “FasTrak” gateless gate system at its London-based innovation centre. Here’s how it works. First, the traveller presents their ticket at a next-generation validator. As with existing machines, this validator accepts Oyster cards and contactless cards, but it also works with some alternative payment methods: Bluetooth LTE (which could identify passengers by their phone as they pass through, without them needing to hold it on the scanner), palm vein scan and facial recognition.

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The palm vein scanner uses an infrared sensor to capture the pattern of blood vessels in your hand. At the moment, Cubic envisages that a rider would go to a station to register their palm print and link it to their payment account. Then, when they put their hand on the scanner before a journey, the scanner will recognise their palm and charge their account. “The point being you could use your hand rather than your oyster card as a token to access the system,” Roat says.



Palm vein patterns are unique, like fingerprints. They are a better biometric to use in this scenario, Roat says, because they are beneath the skin; fingerprint scanners can easily get dirty or oily from other people’s hands and stop working. “With this, without having to touch anything we can get an accurate reading,” he says.

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The facial recognition system would work in a similar way to the palm vein scanner: You register your face as your ticket, then cameras and infrared sensors at the gate detect you when you pass through and charge your payment account. The use of infrared sensors means the system couldn’t be fooled by a 2D image.



The validator is the first part of the system. But without any gates, how can it stop fare-evaders from simply walking past and boarding a train? This is where the object tracking system comes in. It recognises when a person validates their ticket (however they choose to do so), then tracks them as they walk through the corridor. A corridor is used instead of a single gate line, to give people more space and to avoid a sudden crush of people.

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In Cubic’s prototype, lights in the tunnel turn green if a person has paid and red if they haven’t. The company is experimenting with different types of feedback to see what works best – perhaps a sound, a voice or a vibrating floor tile could be more effective.



But is that enough of a deterrent to stop fare-evaders? At the moment, Roat says the system is intended to be used at gateless stations anyway. At some London stations, passengers must present their payment card at an Oyster terminal before and after travelling, but do not have to pass through gates. They are then charged the maximum fare if they forget to tap in or out. A system like this could remind people to pay. And while it might not stop people trying to board without paying, it could inform operators of where and when most people are skipping fares, so they can deploy staff at hotspots.



Cubic aims to get this gateless tracking system to a UK station within the year. But Roat says that facial recognition won’t be in use for some time, as it’s simply not accurate enough yet. There’s also the issue that many are concerned about the security risks of giving away their biometric data. If a transport company were to collect this, they would need strict security and privacy controls. Roat suggests that customers’ attitudes may change as facial recognition is used in more regularly; for example, the newly-launched iPhone X unlocks through facial recognition.



But he imagines that passengers would always have multiple ticket options. “So if you didn't want to use your face and only wanted to travel with your smart card, that's up to you.”