The inspectors issue around 60,000 penalty tickets a year, and until last October these were written out by hand straight onto a pad – one copy was given to the passenger and the other sent to the Investigations and Prosecutions Section (IPS) of Bus Enforcement for input into their systems. This was a time-consuming task, with a team of people working behind the scenes to keep the information up-to-date.

 

Inspectors were already using PDA technology for tasks such as time management and data collection. So TFL’s Head of Enforcement Jeff Tucker asked Business Systems and Development Manager Chris Nommik and his team to investigate how the technology could be employed to streamline the penalties process.

During a nine month trial, a system was put together with the help of Richard Evans at Warren Point Ltd and Cognito Ltd  to create an electronic penalty fare form  – for the standard £20 fine – for use on PDAs.

 

Penalty fare notices could then be input directly by RPIs and sent to IPS office as an electronic file using GPRS real time wireless communications. By coupling a mobile printer with the PDAs, a copy of the notice could be printed on the spot and handed to the passenger.

 

After exhaustive field trials of various combinations of PDAs and mobile printing devices, Chris Nommik and team put together a solution combining the XDA II PDA with the Brother MPrint  MW-140BT mobile printer.

Says Chris:  “We chose the MW-140BT because it offers Bluetooth. It means that inspectors can wear the printer on a holster on their hip and print from there while holding the PDA in their hands.

 

“In addition, we use pre-printed A7 paper and have found that it is easy to load paper into the machine. “The MW-140BT has a good battery life. Inspectors will tend to charge the battery overnight but if they forget we’ve found that it lasts for at least 18 hours – and that’s more than enough for two shifts.”