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e-Ticketing in Germany

Posted: 19 August 2010 | J. (Sjef) A.L. Janssen, Managing Director, VDV-Kernapplikations GmbH & Co. KG and Hartmut Loerch Head of IT Management, VDV-Kernapplikations GmbH & Co. KG | No comments yet

Public transport in Germany is crucial for the economy of the country. Passengers use the system more than 10 billion times a year while the frequency of use has been growing steadily for two decades now. The increasing demand for public transport is fuelled by changes in the job market framework conditions. Growing distances between home and place of work, transition to flexible work places and continuing growth of metropolitan regions are also key elements of this change. In addition, the awareness of the population in terms of environmental protection and cost has increased significantly.

Public transport in Germany is crucial for the economy of the country. Passengers use the system more than 10 billion times a year while the frequency of use has been growing steadily for two decades now. The increasing demand for public transport is fuelled by changes in the job market framework conditions. Growing distances between home and place of work, transition to flexible work places and continuing growth of metropolitan regions are also key elements of this change. In addition, the awareness of the population in terms of environmental protection and cost has increased significantly.

Public transport in Germany is crucial for the economy of the country. Passengers use the system more than 10 billion times a year while the frequency of use has been growing steadily for two decades now. The increasing demand for public transport is fuelled by changes in the job market framework conditions. Growing distances between home and place of work, transition to flexible work places and continuing growth of metropolitan regions are also key elements of this change. In addition, the awareness of the population in terms of environmental protection and cost has increased significantly.

Today, public transport in Germany has a high reputation. This is largely due to a modern, clearly designed and extensive network as well as a simple, interoperable and intermodal ticketing system (at least within the metro – politan areas). On the other hand, most trips are made by season ticket holders which make up only 15% of the population. Up to now, the vast majority of people i.e. 40%, only use public transport occasionally. Still, this amounts to 25% of all trips. Therefore, these occasional riders are the main target group for interoperable e-ticketing, as they profit most from easy and error-proof ticket selection, convenient electronic payment and seamless ticketing for the whole travel chain.

Developments after World War II

During the ‘years of economic wonder’ in Germany after the Second World War, public transport was lucky to profit from slowly but steady renovation and improvement, often hardly visible in terms of disruption for the public.

During the first years of reconstruction, the ‘car friendly city’ was the leading planning concept. However, city planners learnt quickly that the boost of traffic generated by the boost of the economy could never be handled adequately by this concept. Consequently, the required evolution resulted in the ‘Priority for Public Transport’ approach. Access-blocking gates were removed, transport systems were increasingly linked and public transport associations were founded. All actions led to a largely integrated public transport system in Germany. However, even recent tariff systems remained complex as outdated technology was not able to support the upcoming self-service ticketing system properly.

Ongoing political support through public sponsorships and market openings went along with steady progress in technology. Pure paper tickets were replaced by magnetic stripe tickets which were then replaced by smart cards. Unfortunately, and to some extent due to the federal structure of Germany, the rapidly upcoming e-ticketing pilot projects used different media, often issued by third parties. Further common characteristics were different chip card types, different purposes or use cases and multiple hardware and software solutions.

Main drivers in the development of chip cards in public transport

Main drivers in the development of chip cards in public transport

Focus on Interoperability

Interoperability became the vision for future German e-ticketing. The Association of German Transport Companies (VDV) recognised this historic opportunity to create a nationwide, standardised user-friendly electronic fare management system. In 2003, it took action to develop the VDV Core Application and therefore founded VDV Core Application Ltd. This meant partnership with a limited liability company as general partner. By nature, VDV became the general partner, whereby individual public transport companies, associations and other stake holders in and around public transport make up the group of individual partners.

The mission of the application can be described as follows:

» Modular architecture to keep entrance hurdles low and allow a local ‘best fit’ approach – electronic payment for paper tickets in variant #1, electronic ticket instead of paper ticket in variant #2, and automated fare calculation by automatic check in/out system in variant #3

» Variants to be implemented gradually and to coexist with each other

» All passengers are intended to use all national electronic fare management systems seamlessly with one type of media – this requires an integrated customer interface for each module

» Independence of any pricing system i.e. allowing full local self-administration of fare model

» State-of-the-art security concept with regard to potentially high values stored on the system and long-term investment protection

» Using CEN and ISO standards as norm base only.

VDV Core Application taking shape

The system was built between 2003 and 2005, always keeping an eye on ongoing developments of technology as well as on lessons learnt in electronic fare management standards like ITSO in the UK and Calypso in France. Just in time with the development work finishing in 2005, the system was piloted in four regions in Germany, pushing approximately two million contactless chip cards as customer media into the market.

In September 2009, the first nationwide results work shop took place and communicated the unanimous message: The VDV Core Application is a success story! Since then, the number of implementation projects has grown quickly. Nobody talks about pilot projects anymore, only about implementation projects.

By 2011, the VDV Core Application will have five million cards in the market. The consecutive benchmark will be reached in 2015, when we forecast 10 million cards in about 28-30 regions to be in the hands of customers.

VDV Core Application going international

On top of the internal development in Germany, Austria has successfully finished a pilot as well. Other countries have started to evaluate the VDV Core Application in regards to potential implementation.

Furthermore, the VDV Core Application has significantly contributed to the success of the EU-IFM I project. In a two-and-a-half year effort, three European e-ticketing organisations (Calypso Network Association (Belgium), ITSO (UK) and VDV (Germany)) have worked out a road map towards interoperability of fare management systems in Europe. The first step in order to achieve this goal will be the application download of the application of the host country to the passenger’s local medium. Jumping to the end of the road map, the three organisations will demonstrate a common production VDV card at the final project meeting, which has been loaded with the British ITSO, French NaviGO and German Core Application (VDV-KA).

VDV Kernapplikation pictograms   Source: VDV-Kernapplikations GmbH & Co. KG

VDV Kernapplikation pictograms Source: VDV-Kernapplikations GmbH & Co. KG

Key success factors

How did VDV Core Application become successful in such a short time? Taking a closer look, there are several key factors for success.

First of all, the primary key success factor is the interoperability and simplicity of the system from the customer’s point-of-view. The customer can be sure they will be safely guided by the common logo and pictograms, ensuring they will to be able to use the common procedures and handlings everywhere. Simply limitless and limitlessly simple is the operating principle, which assures the traveller that the process they have learnt once for each variant will work reliably and nationwide.

The second key success factor is the state-of-the-art security of the system. The security infrastructure of the German core application is a shared, open and trustworthy platform for operators in public transportation and their customers in all their various roles. The primary goal of the security infrastructure and its management system is to systematically protect the production and business processes involved in electronic ticketing against intentional attacks as well as unexpected events. At the same time, it must satisfy the expectation that the independence and security of individual organisations must be preserved.

The security management system consists of the three primary parts:

» Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)

» Key Management

» Provision of Secure Application Modules (SAM).

The three parts are technically and contractually separated from each other, each part has its own ordering and delivery processes and their interfaces are completely documented.

Implementation Forecast VDV Core Application Source: VDV-Kernapplikations GmbH & Co. KG

Implementation Forecast VDV Core Application Source: VDV-Kernapplikations GmbH & Co. KG

The PKI uses a two-level structure, i.e. there is a Root Certification Authority (Root-CA), which is a kind of trust anchor for the entire system, and a level of four Subordinate Certification Authorities (Sub-CA). The Root-CA certifies the keys of the Sub-CA’s, which in turn certify the keys of the individual components (SAM and User Media) and users. The Root-CA certifies that certain public keys belong to certain Sub-CA’s which use these keys to certify that certain public keys belong to certain components or users and that they may only be used for certain purposes. Thus, using the known public key of the Root-CA, it is possible for any participant in the system to verify the authenticity and authorisation of any public key in the system in a twostep procedure.

The Key Management System of the Core Application is capable of supplying all participating organisations, in all their various roles and with all their various components, with the necessary keys according to the security concept of the system. The keys are divided into two groups according to whether their usage is relevant for many organisations or only for a single organisation within the system. The so called ‘system keys’ are used to secure the communication between possibly distinct organisations and are essential to the inter operability of the system. The organisation specific keys are used to secure communications and to create transactions in which a single organisation is both sender and receiver.

The security concept requires the employment of hardware based Secure Application Modules (SAM) in the terminals of retailers and transport operators for sales and acceptance processes. The SAM enables the strict control over the confidentiality of cryptographic keys, the integrity of security relevant processes and the uniqueness of identifiers and cryptographic keys within the whole system.

The third success factor is the strong, continuous and unanimous support of the system by all relevant stakeholders. Amongst those, the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs (BMVBS) is outstanding, as it has provided both political statements by Ministers and State Secretaries as well as public sponsorship programmes since 2007 up to now. In addition, as of October 2008 the Federal State Ministers of Transport set the implementation of the VDV Core Application as the precondition for public sponsorship.

Next steps

What will be the next steps of e-ticketing in Germany? As the momentum of current development is quite strong, many important things will happen in parallel, including:

» The number of implementations of the VDV Core Application in Germany is growing exponentially as of 2010, as most metropolitan areas have started their implementation projects

» Consequently, the VDV Core Application Ltd. Partnership has started to transform from a development company to a service company offering which will soon offer a central component certification, a central blacklist and clearing service, and an eTicket Germany Portal for broad communication and extended consultancy for users

» In parallel, a nationwide marketing project has just been launched

» The next stage of evolution of the Core Application itself has been started to keep pace with ongoing technological progress

» e-Ticketing pilot projects currently testing new technologies, and thus not yet fully compliant, will be integrated step-by-step into the Core Application while simultaneously developing the application further based on learnings from these projects. Project highlights are Touch&Travel of Deutsche Bahn based on NFC mobile phones, the VDV 2D bar code ticket, the VDV mobile phone ticket and mass market maturity of Be In / Be Out systems

» The VDV Core Application Ltd. Partnership will enforce its engagement on an inter – national basis to further promote standardisation and interoperability. Project highlights to be named here are the EU IFM 2 project and further development of the ISO CEN 24014, while taking new inter – national developments, such as the results of the EU IFM project, into account.

IFM Project Roadmap    Source: IFM project

IFM Project Roadmap Source: IFM project

Conclusion

eTicketing Germany has come a long way, and there is still a long way to go. The good news is that speed is accelerating rapidly and all stake holders have recognised that there is no alternative to a nationwide implementation of (((eTicket Germany. Other nations in Europe have also recognised the urgent need for a national e-ticketing system while also becoming aware of the profit of international interoperability. This has resulted in a joint desire and engagement for interoperable e-ticketing on all levels, which will provide a solid basis for exponential and sustainable growth both nationally and internationally. eTicket Germany is ready to go, as much for the passengers as the transport companies themselves!

For more information, please visit www.vdv-ka.org

About the Authors

Drs. Ing. J. (Sjef) A.L. Janssen

Drs. Ing. J. (Sjef) A.L. Janssen is Managing Director of VDV Core Application. During his prior career in public transport of the Netherlands, he was a management member of a large Dutch transport company and also worked for the Dutch association of public transport in chip card development.

Hartmut Loerch

Hartmut Loerch is Head of IT Management of VDV Core Application, the issuer of the German e-ticket standard. During his previous career at leading international banks, he headed up European consumer product management and programme management. He has led international IT projects such as Euro conversion and platform implementations.

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