TICKETING & FARE COLLECTION
Transport ticketing standards bodies across Europe have taken a major step towards the creation of an EU Intelligent Fare Management Alliance. Adam Hewitt reports.
O
rganisations from across the EU came together on February 15 to sign a memo-
randum of understanding to co-operate in find- ing a way forward for European interoperabil- ity in transport ticketing.
The agreement takes forward the work begun by the EU Interoperable Fare Management (IFM) project, which ended in June 2010.
Representatives of Germany’s VDV KA, the UK’s ITSO, France’s AFIMB, the Calypso Network Association, and the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) signed up at the IT-TRANS conference in Karlsruhe (pictured). The ultimate aim is to make transport ticketing across parts of Europe simpler and easier for passengers, with plans for an Interoperable Fare Management (IFM) Alliance, set up and supported by the EU Commission.
It would create a ‘trust scheme’ for public trans- port smartcards, mirroring similar initiatives in the mobile phone and banking industries. Such a scheme will cover the rules, specifica- tions and governance requirements for mem- bership, compliance checking, the award of certification, actions to be taken in the event of
The UITP said in a statement: “The new techniques using contactless bankcards and mobile phone solutions are compatible with the IFM methodology and could support a wider European interoperable ticketing concept and open up for further development as well as new mobile payment solutions.
non-compliance, a recognisable scheme mark and published list of compliant schemes in the Trust network.
Once the EU-IFM Alliance has been created and is operational, there are plans for a pilot to test the portal, the trust scheme and the nec- essary compliance of smartcards as they inter- operate between transport schemes and across mobile phone networks and with bankcards.
The electronic ticketing issue features strongly in the EU Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) agenda, having been included in the white paper on transport strategy and the ITS direc- tive. It is also a priority for DG MOVE Urban ITS expert group. EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas has a vision of a public transport user, anywhere in Europe, being able to hold all of their tickets in a single smart ‘wallet’.
“The public transport sector is willing to active- ly take part in a further development to meet the goals presented in the various recent EU- proposals. But there is a need to use the knowl- edge and the investments done by the public transport sector and develop it further.
“With the IFM approach and the road map presented in spring 2010, there is a viable solu- tion for electronic ticket interoperability which above all also meets the important subsidiarity factor for the public transport sector.
“Moreover, this approach fits well with all other transport sectors and other potential contact- less smart card and mobile applications.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
www.uitp.org www.ifm-project.eu
D
RTM gets some thoughts on the future of ticketing technology from Fujitsu’s head of rail, Nick Chisnall. segregate queues more easily.
ealing with projected growth in passen- ger numbers on the UK rail network is
not only an issue for operators and Network Rail, but also those handling ticketing for all those welcome farepayers.
Nick Chisnall, head of rail at Fujitsu, said: “We tend to think of it as being a national rail industry but clearly there are very different markets in there – commuting, long distance, regional railways – they all have very different customer demands. Previously people saw ticketing as something you had to have to travel; now it is about retailing and about making the right offers to people and using ticketing as a mechanism for building the relationship with the customer.
“We think that self-service ticket vending machines will still be a growing marketplace and over that timeframe there are significant benefits for the TOCs in having a consistent application set across multiple channels.
“There is a lot of refresh which occurs around
franchise change. That’s coming up at the moment. In this round people are starting to understand that their retailing systems are really quite key to them so are looking to make some very significant investments.”
The company is planning to work with Höft & Wessel to build prepaid ticket-on-departure kiosks, as well as small footprint, cashless TVMs – Rail Settlement Plan (RSP) accreditation for these is underway.
Chisnall said: “This comes from our experience at mainstream retailing in supermarkets. If you’re at a busy London termini to collect a ticket on departure, you arrive and quite often you’re standing in a TVM queue unsure what the people ahead of you are doing: whether they’re just picking up a ticket on departure, or whether they have a complex ‘research and purchase’ which is maybe going to take them 7 or 8 minutes.”
He said the small machines dedicated to ticket collections would allow operators to split and
He admitted that with traditional TVMs, espe- cially because of the complexity in providing all of the possible tickets available, could be con- fusing and complex for some passengers.
He said: “We want to work closely with the TOCs to overcome the issues: we understand those are some of the major obstacles. It’s not only that people feel they don’t necessarily get the best value from them, they also become an obstacle for other passengers to use them because they’re complex and they’re not sure that they’re going to get the right answer.
“The UK ticketing systems are more complex than in most other countries. That’s just the nature of our industry.”
opinion@railtechnologymagazine.com Nick Chisnall
TELL US WHAT YOU THINK rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 12 | 43
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