According to the new transport act all transport that are purchased by public transport authorities from summer 2018 onwards should have a ticketing system, where the passengers right to travel is verified via Internet from a background system, i.e. account based ticketing.

The legislation affects on about 1,5 million finnish public transport customers and possibly about 77 cities or municipalities that are competent authorities or belong to an area where public transport is organized by competent authorities (by Public Service Regulation of Transport).

In the worst case the legislation means that the current travel card technology and all the investments made recently by tens of millions euros will be outdated by the time the regulation comes to force.

Vehicle devices should be in contact with the background system all the time. There are around 4 500 devices in buses and local trains that would need an investment or an update, with a cost of about 10 million euros. Investments to the background systems would require at least 15 million euros.

Law has demands for technology in public services

Whereas otherwise the aim of the law is to reduce regulation the Act on Transport services will start to regulate the technology of ticketing systems in the services organized by public authorities. Because one cannot change the ticketing system one route or public transport service contract at a time, the law actually requires changing the whole background systems, software and devices by summer 2018.

It also states that one should use “generally applied technologies” for the verification of travel rights and one should accept all such systems used by service providers which contact the back office systems for verification but one does not get an answer what this means in practice.

Legal certainty is at risk. The authorities have no realistic chance nor ability to organise their budgets, resources and present contracts in such a way that they will not break the law. On the other hand the interpretation of the content of the law would only be clarified if somebody complains about the demands and specifications related to ticketing systems within public procurement processes.

Technology choices that are made today, can be old tomorrow. Therefore changing the daily routines of 1,5 million travel card customers ins not simple nor fast. The changes should be made with proven technologies, with as little risk as possible and in a controlled manner in several stages.

There surely are good intensions – to make travel chains easier and enable combinations of transport services and interoperability across different transport providers, but the intensions whitout understanding the current state or whitout a plan, can in the worst case lead to impossible paragraphs in the law.

There are no obligations in European legislation to move forward to such ticketing and payment systems that Finland is now requiring. Enabling progress in multimodality will require co operation within transport industry rather than regulation. One should also notice that technology changes within city regions do not guarantee any change or improvement to the customer experiences, since travel chains requires participation of commercially produced services in the market.

Why a timetable that no country has been able to achieve when aiming at interoperability of ticketing?

Is it necessary to define in a law what kind of ticketing systems are used in the transport services that municipalities and cities are organizing and funding voluntarily?

Only the city of Turku has an account based ticketing and payment system that meet the requirements of the Transport Code. Other cities will be in trouble.

Clarity, reliability and speed of payment and ticketing systems are important for both the customer and organiser of the transport services

Fast verification of payment is very important for the customers boarding public transport services in the cities. Travel cards became general means of electronic ticketing in the 1990’s in Finland and they are common technology even today. The devices in the vehicles verify the right to travel and keep the possible loaded value up to date. All this needs to happen fast since at peak times the queues of onboarding passengers may be long and yet you need to keep up reliable travel times.

Public transport is meant for everybody from children to elderly people. Therefore the supplier of the services has to have an accessible way for everyone to verify their ticket and also many ways to purchase single tickets. Mobile tickets make life and travel easier for many people and also mobile phone can be an ID on trips, but will not serve the whole range of customers of public transport.

Resource planning and follow up

The provider and planner of services needs to have one background system where all the information of usage of services and monetary issues can be handled according to all the reporting, summarizing and analyzing rules of financial data related to transport services organized by municipalities.

By collecting and analysing user data the services can be further improved. In transport planning the loading and capacity of vehicles are monitored and more vehicles are added to the fleet when necessary. Ticketing and payment system with it’s reports is also a follow up system of sales and budgeting, and on the other hand used to prove and calculate the ticketing income when related to compensations of public services contracts to the operators.

Ticketing and payment systems are used to create ticket types and prices that aim to increase ridership and to cost-efficient solutions of services.

Mark your calender 2017

Helsinki Afternoon seminar 16.3.2017
Local Public Transport Days at Lappeenranta 21.-22.9.2017

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Translation From our finnish Newsletter 16.12.2016