Karlsruhe, October 2016.
From October 18 to 20 2016, INIT will be showcasing their latest state-of-the-art solutions at Persontrafik, taking place in Gothenburg, Sweden. During the three days of the exhibition, visitors can take advantage of the opportunity to talk to experts, get to know more about INIT’s integrated solutions and view the latest developments, in particular MOBILEvario, INIT’s ID-based ticketing solution, on-site at the INIT stand B06:41.
Smart integrated, interoperable and multimodal ID-based ticketing
To provide greater convenience to their passengers, it has nowadays become a trend for public transportation companies to invest in modern fare collection systems. INIT has already installed more than 50 fare management systems worldwide and has now added a new milestone with the revolutionary ID based ticketing solution.
In traditional card-based ticketing systems, much of the fare logic and data is hard coded on the cards in a data structure. As an alternative, ID-based or account-based systems hold the customer data and business logic in the back-end system, such as MOBILEvario. The ticket medium itself only contains a unique identification number (ID) and is merely used as read-only identifiers, authenticating the passenger and linking him to his account. Based on that scheme, not only media issued by the transport company are accepted (closed-loop), but also any personalized e-ticketing media that the passenger already possesses, like EMV based contactless credit or bank cards or NFC smartphones (open-loop). The use of Application Program Interfaces (API) creates an open architecture for the integration of hard- and software. Hence, third party solutions can be cost-effectively integrated.
Any transactions are communicated in real time to the back-end system by each sales channel without the need to write information on the physical ticket media. The key challenge for an ID-based ticketing solution is the real-time communication between all components. Thus, the system is designed in such a way that network outages, bad cellular network coverage or hardware failures can be handled without difficulty. To allow smooth operation of the system in case of a communication disruption with the vehicle devices (offline information), the INIT fare validation logic is able to recalculate existing transactions. In the meantime, passengers are still able to board without delays as the field devices feature a fallback logic, allowing them offline validations based on business rules and white-/hotlists. With this approach, INIT can handle transactions from a bus that was offline throughout its whole shift. Neither the customer, nor the agency suffers any losses.
Experience makes the difference
In 2014, the port city of Turku in Finland has been the first INIT customer to migrate from a card-based system to the ID-based ticketing approach (300 vehicles). During an extended migration phase, the system supported both modes in parallel without a negative impact for customers. Furthermore, the development of our open SalesAPI allowed the introduction and easy integration of several sales channels into the system. A few months later, Portland, Oregon decided to establish the first fully integrated ITS and ID-based ticketing system in North America (700 vehicles). The so-called Hop Fastpass™ smart card system for public transit is scheduled to launch in 2017. Besides closed-loop fare media, the system will accept Apple Pay, Google Wallet and contactless bank cards as payment modes. Local suppliers have been taken under contract by the public transport operator TriMet for the distribution of fares, which is facilitated by standardized interfaces. Portland’s ID-based ticketing project has been extended to the neighboring city of Vancouver, WA (170 vehicles), making regional travels even more convenient for public transport users.
Continuing the success into 2016, four more ticketing system contracts were signed by INIT: Tampa, Florida for a region-wide electronic ticketing and fare management system (eight county transportation companies, 600 vehicles), followed by Grand Rapids, Michigan (150 vehicles) and also by Honolulu, Hawaii (530 vehicles). The latest assignment came from National Express West Midlands, based in Birmingham, UK. The contract covers equipping 1,600 buses with appropriate hardware and installing a ticketing solution that enables the use of contactless bank cards for ticket payments.
Don’t miss the presentation of Jörg Neuhaus, initperdis GmbH: "Operational Planning and Contracting Process as a Dialogue between Authority and Operators" Speakers Corner, Wednesday, 19 October, 2 p.m.
