SIEMENS

It’s a familiar situation. You’re standing at a train or bus ticket machine in the morning on your way to work and you don’t have enough change, or else you have enough money but you’re confused because you don’t know whether to buy a single ticket, a day ticket, a one-zone ticket of either kind, or a multi-zone ticket. In addition, you may be trying to decide whether it would be faster to take a bus or a train. It’s enough to drive you crazy.

Fortunately, help is on the way in the form of an electronic ticket that will liberate public transport passengers from the search for change and make trains and buses an attractive alternative to cars. A key benefit of the e-ticket system is the fact that it includes state-of-the-art technology that automatically calculates the correct fare. The only thing passengers need is a plastic card – and Siemens has already developed it. Equipped with an integrated radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that allows it to be identified via radio waves, the card is also intermodal, meaning that it can be used for different modes of transport, and interoperable, which means it will be accepted by different transit companies and associated service providers. In other words, e-tickets are a kind of one-stop solution – everything a traveller needs to get around town or to make use of a regional transport network, no matter how many times they switch transport modes or operators.

Siemens is constantly conducting research into concepts for user-friendly travel, and it has developed various ticketing solutions that make such travel a reality. Portuguese rail company Comboios de Portugal, for example, now has an e-ticketing solution. Siemens supplied the system’s access control technology and the background software for interoperable networking with OTLIS, a Lisbon-based regional transport company. Each individual trip is registered when a passenger holds his or her e-ticket smartcard in front of a reader when entering or exiting a bus or train. This access control principle is known as a check-in/check-out (CiCo) system.

But e-tickets can do a lot more than that. For instance, Siemens’ smartcard also includes a radio-based feature that eliminates the trouble of even removing it from a purse or wallet. Known as a be-in/be-out (BiBo) system, the technology could make the following scenario possible in a few years: A passenger with a smartcard in his pocket or backpack enters a bus or train. The card is automatically registered without the passenger having to do anything. The Siemens spatial monitoring system that makes this possible consists of a reader and a mini-computer known as a BiBo Gateway. The reader, which is mounted on the ceiling of a train car or bus, includes antennas for capturing smartcard signals and conducting wireless communication with the BiBo Gateway. The smartcard is repeatedly registered via radio waves throughout the trip.

Whenever a passenger leaves a train car or bus, the system automatically ends the trip for that card. The BiBo Gateway collects and encrypts the data – i.e. distance traveled, transfers between classes, trip interruptions – and then compresses and sends it to a software system. There, the information is assigned to a customer account and the lowest possible fare is calculated. “It’s exactly this aspect – correct calculation and invoicing – that poses the greatest challenge for the system,” says Marcel Kalbermatter, who is responsible for e-ticketing at Siemens Switzerland. No cash payments are required. “Passengers can choose between direct debit from their bank account, a credit card payment, or a prepaid e-ticket,” Kalbermatter explains. “The prepaid option offers them the advantage of not having to register any personal data.”

World Leader in e-Ticketing. Kalbermatter’s native country, Switzerland, could soon become a pioneer in e-ticketing. More than ten years ago, as part of a program called Easy Ride, initial tests were conducted there for cashless public transport travel. The system worked well and also proved to be reliable, but the cost of implementing the BiBo approach was too high. Today, however, the technology is far more advanced. As a result, the SBB rail company and the Swiss Union of Public Transport plan to introduce a single electronic ticket to replace all conventional tickets by 2017. “Siemens is now making arrangements to get the system approved,” says Kalbermatter. “If we succeed in introducing the BiBo principle in Switzerland, it will make the country the world leader in e-ticketing.”

Siemens’ e-ticketing technology has steadily improved. “The technology has gotten a lot cheaper, so we’re now estimating just a fraction of the cost that we were looking at only a few years ago,” says Kalbermatter, who came up with the Easy Ride concept for Switzerland. One reason for the substantial reduction in costs is that the expensive Ethernet cables that were previously used have now been replaced with secure wireless communications. RFID technology has also become well-established, and reading devices and chips are much less expensive.

E-ticketing also offers public transport companies a key benefit in that it reduces operating costs. For example, the data on passenger numbers and peak travel times that e-ticketing provides can be used to optimize fleets. According to statistics derived from the Oyster card used in London’s CiCo system, e-ticketing can significantly reduce the number of fare-beaters and counterfeit ticket makers who cheat the system, and also largely prevents people from buying the wrong ticket. Indeed, London’s public transport companies have seen their income losses cut from 4.5 percent in 2003 to 1.5 percent in 2007, which translates into additional proceeds of nearly 47 million euros. The tickets sometimes still need to be checked, of course, but in most cases this can be done easily by holding a chipcard near a reader to see if it’s valid. The automatic monitoring of trip routes, times, and route capacity utilization would also make it possible for transport companies to restructure their fare systems. For example, frequent travelers could be given discounts, and the passengers who travel during off-times could be rewarded in order to improve the transport system’s capacity utilization.

Smartcards aren’t the only option for e-tickets, since smartphones can be used to purchase them as well. There are limits to the BiBo application possibilities with phones, however. For one thing, not everyone has the right phone for such technology; this means that cell phones are only one alternative at the moment, rather than the ultimate solution. There are also data protection issues, since the mobile phones that are used to purchase tickets would need to remain on during the entire length of the trip so that data could be collected from them each time the phones pass through a radio cell. All of a passenger’s movements through the system would thus be registered. Smartcards offer much greater protection against manipulation and abuse in this regard. Nevertheless, cell phones are definitely a viable alternative for access control, as is demonstrated by solutions such as Handyticket Deutschland, which was developed and implemented by Siemens’ HanseCom subsidiary and the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV).

Two things are certain, however: Paper tickets will soon be a thing of the past, and smartcards will be used in other areas besides public transport over the long term. “The more functions you can integrate into a smartcard, the more attractive it will become,” Kalbermatter explains. “For example, you could use it to pay for parking spaces or to pick up bicycles or vehicles at car-sharing and bike-sharing stations. The most important thing here is that everything will be paid for via a single medium and users will receive only one bill at the end of the month.” Such a setup would bring public and personal transport yet another step closer together. Parking-space shortages, traffic congestion, and air pollution are some of the biggest problems cities face today – and e-tickets could help reduce their severity.