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get me there was Transport for Greater Manchester's answer to London's Oyster card
Permanent project revision
Revision 2026-10-16-baseline · effective 2026-10-16
Current revision. This is the snapshot used by the live entity page.
Created the first structured Evidence Passport with 23 claims and 13 source dossiers.
sha256:cbffc82aff51a4945018555f4282e7f4fd5c7de4295fac186a39d1f27407d91e
add /evidencePassport — Added claim-level evidence mapping and source dossiers.add /revisionHistory — Established a permanent, hash-addressed baseline revision.The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.
clm-b4bec1d6c5a45980
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get me there was Transport for Greater Manchester's answer to London's Oyster card
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one smartcard for Metrolink trams, buses and rail
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TfGM hired Atos in September 2012 on a seven-year contract to design, build and operate it.
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From October 2014 it worked on Metrolink, but only for concessionary pass holders.
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In August 2015 TfGM ended the contract, saying it had become clear Atos could not deliver the system
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the settlement terms are confidential
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Vix Technologies and Applied Card Technologies took over in 2016
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only in August 2017 could passengers use a single card for both tram and bus
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Even then it held specific tickets bought in advance, could not be topped up with cash and did not work on trains.
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Renamed Bee Card, it still loads tickets bought through an online account
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since October 2026 it can be carried in Apple Wallet
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TfGM had said in 2013 that contactless bank cards would be accepted on Metrolink later in 2014
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they arrived on 15 July 2019, with the daily fare capped at the adult one-day travelcard price
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and on buses from March 2025
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When it dropped Atos in 2015, TfGM itself said today's smart card already looked destined to be overtaken by contactless payments and mobile apps.
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By 2024 contactless was the most popular way to pay on Metrolink, with 16.5 million journeys that year, according to TfGM.
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After the card's full launch in 2017, TfGM's customer director acknowledged there was some way to go, as critics compared it unfavourably with Oyster.
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the £32.4m government award announced in 2012 funded a package of green travel schemes of which smart ticketing was one
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the Atos settlement is confidential
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Greater Manchester's card took from a 2012 contract to August 2017 to carry tram and bus tickets for fare-paying passengers
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by then its own operator had said bank cards and phones would overtake it
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TfGM's contactless pay-as-you-go charges adult fares only
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child, young-person and concessionary passes, and tickets bought in advance, still sit on an account-linked smartcard
This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.
Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.
sha256:cbffc82aff51a4945018555f4282e7f4fd5c7de4295fac186a39d1f27407d91e
src-9ece4c428011f340Reports TfGM's naming of the 'get me there' scheme, to cover Metrolink trams, buses and rail services with roll-out beginning in 2014; quotes the TfGM committee chair comparing it with London's Oyster and Liverpool's Walrus, and says passengers could also use concessionary photo cards, contactless bank cards and, in future, smartphones.
src-e3d04f9c21740d36Reports more than 350 smart readers installed across Metrolink as the first step of the ITSO-compliant 'get me there' roll-out, planned for Metrolink in 2014 and heavy rail by 2017, and says contactless 'wave and pay' bank cards would be accepted later in 2014 with a daily cap at the all-zones one-day travelcard fare.
src-f2f411120b445796Reports a £32.4m Department for Transport award to TfGM from the Local Sustainable Transport Fund for green travel schemes; a TfGM spokesman said the money would support a programme to develop smart card ticketing across trains, trams and buses, alongside cycling, walking and traffic-management projects.
src-5b10cf7e7ea7ef32Reports TfGM ending its contract with Atos by mutual agreement after three years; Atos had been appointed in September 2012 on a seven-year contract to design, build and operate the system, described as Manchester's answer to London's Oyster card. Quotes the joint statement (Atos cannot deliver the system as contracted; terms confidential; substantial compensation to TfGM), says the card was introduced in October 2014 for concessionary pass holders, and quotes TfGM that 'Today's smart card already looks destined to be overtaken by contactless payments and mobile apps on smart phones.'
src-2e7eb77311fcead6Reports TfGM terminating the Atos contract; says smart ticketing was introduced on Metrolink in October 2014 but only for concessionary pass holders, and was to have reached tram and bus passengers that year; carries a BBC Radio Manchester analysis calling it a blow to the government's hopes of an Oyster card for the north.
src-74e54125d3048e5dReports that Applied Card Technologies and Vix Technologies were awarded TfGM's smart ticketing services after the Atos contract fell apart, and that Atos paid an undisclosed amount of compensation.
src-f278198dd265f8c9Reports the launch of the 'get me there' smart card across buses and Metrolink, allowing passengers to use a single card for journeys on any Greater Manchester tram and bus, with new 16–18 and corporate cards; notes the card had been used by concessionary pass holders since 2014; quotes the mayor that it would 'for the first time' let people hop on and off trams and buses with their smart card.
src-597c76b42a65ba26Reports heavy criticism of the newly launched Get Me There scheme and lists its limits: cards ordered online with five to seven working days' delivery or bought at 16 Travelshops; the app usable only on trams; neither usable on trains; no cash top-up, only specific tickets; no contactless at smart readers. Quotes TfGM's customer director that 'we acknowledge there is some way to go' and TfGM that the system is 'not yet where we want [it] to be', with a longer-term plan including contactless payment and Oyster-style top-up.
src-cb26a61867e0cee9Carries TfGM's launch announcement: from 15 July 2019 Metrolink passengers can touch in and out with contactless bank cards or devices, with the daily fare capped at the relevant adult one-day travelcard price; developed with Visa; described as the first aggregated pay-as-you-go on light rail outside London.
src-0062dad3a6982d5aTfGM report to the Bee Network Committee proposing multi-modal pay-as-you-go contactless ticketing and capped fares across bus and tram from March 2025; says pay-as-you-go means customers will not need to plan and purchase travel in advance, that Metrolink contactless already has daily and weekly capping, and that bus and multi-modal pay-as-you-go would operate initially with adult fares only.
src-dafc765f566bc615Republishes TfGM's announcement that contactless 'tap and go' on Metrolink passed 50 million journeys; since its 2019 launch it had become the most popular way to pay, with 16.5 million journeys (around 45,000 a day) the previous year; the scheme was to launch on buses from Sunday 23 March 2025.
src-6b54db5dc91f2109TfGM's current page: tickets and travelcards bought online through an account are loaded onto a Bee Card '(previously get me there)' by touching in at a tram-stop smart reader; former get me there users keep their accounts and cards; igo (child), Our Pass (16–18), concessionary and cycle-hub cards can be linked to an account.
src-14968869c68acf44Reports that TfGM's Bee Card, added to Apple Wallet in August 2026 only for Our Pass holders, became available in Apple Wallet for all Bee Network ticket types from that week, letting users buy bus and tram tickets and store them on a virtual Bee Card.