SINCE the launch of the Transport and Harbours Department’s (T&HD) online ticket-booking service, Ferry Pass, over 7,500 vehicle owners have utilised the service.
The platform, which costs some $6.8 million, was developed by the local technology company V75 Inc, and launched in October 2022.
It aims to mitigate issues encountered by ferry passengers as they relates to securing a place on the vessels.
In an interview with the Department of Public Information (DPI), Founding Director and CEO of V75 Inc, Eldon Marks, highlighted how the platform works and how many users were captured utilising the app.
“On the web interface, we have applied Google Analytics, and it’s been tracking the traffic that comes through the ferrypass.gy since it launched. This shows a live readout of users or usage of the Ferry Pass system. Twenty-six users per minute are interacting with the ferry pass making bookings and looking at future bookings. “I reported on the 5th of October, when it was launched to January 4th and we see that 13,000 users have hit up the site. The Parika to Supenaam route from the 5th of October shows the vehicles that have been booked and recorded that have paid via MMG and we see across the various classes it has been 7500 vehicles,” he said.
Marks noted that the interface of ‘Ferry Pass’ is simple to use and has a system manifest that allows T&HD staff to see all the departures as per the schedule and identify other reports, such as how many individuals were booked per departure, and it gives a great collection of data.
“It also enables workers of T&HD to see future bookings ahead of time and the recorded number of passengers booked versus reserved, the recorded numbers of vehicles booked, and the various classes of vehicles boarded,” he said.
Meanwhile, Marks said the ‘Ferry Pass’ project captures the essence of ‘software with an impact’ as he highlighted the importance of public-private partnership.
“The idea with the public-private partnership in this particular case is that within the private sector, there is a specialist and those specialists are knowledge workers and they are able to exercise the competence that they bring to the trade and that when married with a vision brought forth by the government, can do wondrous things for the population. So, this is why we believe public-private partnerships are crucial to the advancement of any society,” he said.
The online booking platform will soon offer other payment options such as credit and debit payments, for smoother, cash-free transactions. (DPI)
