Rotterdam’s public transport company RET has to give cash back to passengers some 150 times a day – or for one in a thousand journeys – because of problems with the new smart card public transport ticket (ov-chipcard), the Volkskrant reports on Monday.

Transport users association Rover says the figure is much higher – around 10%. The most commonly-reported problem is passengers failing to check out when leaving a bus or tram.
Rotterdam is carrying out extensive trials with the new digital ticket, which should replace all paper tickets nationwide from January 2009.