Best driver support and operation optimisation

“Kooperation Östliches Ruhrgebiet” receives a high-performance ticketing solution

In April 1999, several transportation companies joined together to create the “Kooperation Östliches Ruhrgebiet” (Cooperation Eastern Ruhr area), KÖR for short. The intention of this cooperation is to improve the services for around 340 million passengers in the Eastern Ruhr area and to remove the boundaries in the areas of operation.

Multi-client capable electronic fare management system

To better reach the aim of improving the service quality, new possibilities from recent developments in technological progress are being utilised by the companies included in the “KÖR” cooperation: Bochum-Gelsenkirchener Straßenbahnen Aktiengesellschaft (BOGESTRA), Straßenbahn Herne – Castrop-Rauxel GmbH (HCR) and Dortmunder Stadtwerke AG (DSW21). In order to realise this goal, they have awarded INIT with the implementation of a central, multi-client capable electronic fare management system. This means that passengers will benefit from an efficient and state-of-the-art ticketing system.

In the cities of Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Witten, Hattingen, Herne, Castrop-Rauxel and Dortmund, among others. In this project, BOGESTRA acts as the overall coordinator, which means that the central system and the IT infrastructure are located at the BOGESTRA site in Bochum.

Smooth migration during operation

During the first project phase, the existing background system will be upgraded with INIT’s fare management and clearing system MOBILEvario. MOBILEvario includes all previous functionalities and offers an additional number of supplementary features. Its multi-client capability and the possibility to account for numerous tariff areas make it an ideal solution for networked transportation companies.

The smooth migration ensures that data does not need to be imported and does not get lost. The existing sales data will be transferred to MOBILEvario so that income statistics can be created without any additional operator intervention and, most importantly, without interrupting the statistical evaluations.

Integrated vehicle intelligence

In the second project stage, the ticket printers of 70 buses of HCR, 305 buses and 60 bi-directional trams from BOGESTRA, and 225 buses from DSW21 will be changed step-by-step. Therefore, the previous mobile ticket printers EFADintegral (bus) and EFADportable (BOGESTRA railway vehicle) will be retrofitted by the multi-function unit EVENDpc2. This PC based ticket printer with an integrated on-board unit comes equipped with a touch screen display, a contactless chip card reader and a 2D barcode scanner. The scanner can, for example, read barcodes from the displays of mobile devices like smartphones safely and securely.

Barcode tickets are particularly suitable for single, day, and special tickets, whereas chip cards work especially well for monthly and annual passes. Now, the new background system MOBILEvario manages not only chip cards but also paper tickets and barcode tickets. This makes the straight forward processing of electronic tickets possible from sales to accounting and statistics.

The driver benefits

During the progressive vehicle conversion, the drivers are able to sell tickets via both on-board units EFADintegral or EVENDpc. The background system MOBILEvario processes the data from the ticket printers of both generations and therefore enables the drivers to continue with their normal daily routine without being affected by the conversion.

About “Kooperation östliches Ruhrgebiet” (KöR)

The Bochum-Gelsenkirchener Straßenbahnen Aktiengesellschaft, Straßenbahn Herne – Castrop-Rauxel GmbH, Dortmunder Stadtwerke AG, and the Vestische Straßenbahnen GmbH have joined together to create the “Kooperation Östliches Ruhrgebiet”, in short KÖR, (Cooperation Eastern Ruhr area) in April 1999. The intention of this cooperation is to improve public transportation for their passengers and to reduce costs, for example, by purchasing buses jointly.

Bochum-Gelsenkirchener Straßenbahnen Aktiengesellschaft (BOGESTRA)
The Bochum-Gelsenkirchener Straßenbahnen Aktiengesellschaft, BOGESTRA, provides public mobility for the Middle Ruhr Region with 76 rail and bus lines. The vehicles are deployed in the cities of Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Herne, Witten and Hattingen. In the year 2014, 144.75 million passengers made use of the offerings from BOGESTRA.

Straßenbahn Herne – Castrop-Rauxel GmbH (HCR)
The Straßenbahn Herne – Castrop-Rauxel GmbH is a public transportation company of the city of Herne and is a member of the Rhein-Ruhr transport association. The area of operation currently includes about 201,000 residents.

Dortmunder Stadtwerke AG (DSW21)
The Dortmunder Stadtwerke AG, DSW21, is a partner company in the Rhine-Ruhr transport association and operates eight city railways and more than 70 bus lines in Dortmund and on to Castrop-Rauxel, Schwerte and Lünen-Brambauer. Therefore some overlaps occur with neighbouring transportation companies. In the past year, about 136 million passengers used the transport facilities of DSW21.

Contact

Armin Fettinger

Key Account Manager
INIT GmbH
Germany

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This article was published in our customer magazine INITiative, issue 2/2015. If you want to receive the magazine regularly per email, we kindly ask you to subscribe.

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Best driver support and operation optimisation

“Kooperation Östliches Ruhrgebiet” receives a high-performance ticketing solution