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Helping to build a stronger region through public transport

Posted: 6 December 2006 | Tommy Edh, Automatic Fare Collection Manager at Västtrafik AB in Sweden | No comments yet

The year was 1999. Four small regions in Western Sweden were formed into one new and large region named Västra Götaland. The aim was to build an internationally competitive region, creating stronger trade and industry as well as more work and studying opportunities. In that process public transportation was given a major role. Entirely new fare collection and fare structure systems became part of the plan. Now, eight years later, we are closing in on the last phase of the launch. It’s been a long and very interesting journey.

To fully understand why and how we’ve changed the systems for public transportation in our region, you need some background.

The year was 1999. Four small regions in Western Sweden were formed into one new and large region named Västra Götaland. The aim was to build an internationally competitive region, creating stronger trade and industry as well as more work and studying opportunities. In that process public transportation was given a major role. Entirely new fare collection and fare structure systems became part of the plan. Now, eight years later, we are closing in on the last phase of the launch. It’s been a long and very interesting journey. To fully understand why and how we’ve changed the systems for public transportation in our region, you need some background.

The year was 1999. Four small regions in Western Sweden were formed into one new and large region named Västra Götaland. The aim was to build an internationally competitive region, creating stronger trade and industry as well as more work and studying opportunities. In that process public transportation was given a major role. Entirely new fare collection and fare structure systems became part of the plan. Now, eight years later, we are closing in on the last phase of the launch. It’s been a long and very interesting journey.

To fully understand why and how we’ve changed the systems for public transportation in our region, you need some background.

Close to a decade has passed since the first political decision about a new organisation for public transportation was taken by the provisional board of the Västra Götaland region. Politicians looked at ways to increase the region’s competitiveness. To them, it was crucial to make sure that people could travel to their workplaces or places of study. It was equally vital for the region’s companies to be able to find skilled workforce.

Good public transportation was given a key role in reaching these goals. Politicians wanted to ‘make the Västra Götaland region a little more round’ i.e., quicker journeys for everybody.

Before the foundation of the Västra Götaland region, each of the four smaller regions had their own public transportation company. In January 1999 those four became subsidiaries to a new parent company; Västtrafik AB.

Västtrafik is jointly owned by the Västra Götaland region (50%) and the 49 municipalities in the region (50%).

The Västra Götaland region

Västra Götaland has approximately 1.5 million inhabitants. Its centre is Göteborg, Sweden’s second largest city, with some 500,000 inhabitants plus another 300,000 living in suburbs and smaller towns in the city’s surroundings. As a total, more than half of the region’s population lives in or close to Göteborg.

When it comes to public transportation, roughly 75% of all the trips within our public transportation system are made in and around Göteborg.

In Västra Götaland we also have three larger towns, or small towns that are situated so close together that they in practice work much as one. Here you will find well functioning public transportation.

Large parts of our region are, however, countryside with small towns and municipalities. There are also wide areas where few, or even very few, people live. In most of these parts, public transportation offers travelling opportunities, but without a wide range of choices.

We have to cover rather long distances with our public transportation services. The widest distance, both from north to south and from west to east is roughly 200 kilometres and the total land area that we cover is 24,000 square kilometres.

Västtrafik uses some 1,700 vehicles. Most of them are buses, but we also use trams, trains and we transport people by ferries in our archipelago. All vehicles are owned and driven by contracted entrepreneurs. We at Västtrafik receive the entire traffic revenue and our entrepreneurs are paid according to the terms in each contract.

The infrastructure of our region is very uneven. Göteborg and its surroundings have grown constantly for many years and so has traffic. At the same time parts of the countryside are successively being depopulated, and with fewer inhabitants come a decrease in public transportation. As you can see, we have a large regional imbalance in our region.

All of the factors mentioned above had to be taken into consideration as we developed new fare collection and fare structure systems.

Yet another factor that added to the complexity of our task, were the differences between the public transportation in the four companies that formed Västtrafik.

They featured three different fare structures with a total of 275 zones.

They also featured two incompatible fare collection systems based on magnetic stripe technology.

For people living on one side of a former public transportation border, and working on another side, travelling could be both very complicated and expensive. The borders between the former companies/regions did not build on modern infrastructure. Some of them were even drawn hundreds of years ago when Danes and Swedes fought to gain control over the territories.

One of Västtrafik’s foremost goals was set already two years before the new Västra Götaland region and Västtrafik were founded. That goal was to make travelling throughout the region much easier by means of co-ordinating traffic, timetables, fare structures and such. From a political point of view it was obvious that the new region should have one single fare structure, one single fare collection system and a fully integrated information system.

Already in 1998, Västtrafik’s provisional board took a decision to start work with fare collection and fare structure systems for the new region.

On the same month as Västtrafik was founded, January 1999, the first travelling cards covering the new region were issued, one with 24 hour validity and another with 30 day validity. There was, indeed, a demand for such cards, but issuing them was also an act of great symbolic value. It showed the way.

When we started looking at the new fare collection system, there was a lot of international experience to benefit from. Most of it was, however, from major cities where all traffic is concentrated to a relatively small geographic area. Most of them also feature closed traffic systems where all passengers walk through controlled entrances and exits.

During the first years of development work, we concentrated most of our energy on the technical issues of the fare collection system. After a tender process, ERG Transit Systems was contracted and given the responsibility to develop and deliver everything from driver consoles with ticket processors, card readers/validators and hand held devices for inspection, to technical equipment for points of sales. The contract with ERG also included a back office system for transaction handling, money flow and statistics.

Technical development

As we started out on our journey of technical development, we did not realise how long it would actually take. A wide array of technical problems turned up on the way and caused numerous delays in the project. As of autumn 2006, we still have some technical issues to deal with, most of them concerning the back office system.

The development of our fare structure system started in 2002 when the project management presented its first product range suggestion. It was revised a number of times, but by mid 2003 we made an effort to find broad political consensus to the basic principles of the fare structure system. The idea was to build on a combination of zones and ‘as-the-crow-flies’ distance.

There are many owners behind Västtrafik AB and between some of them there are non-corresponding interests. Countryside municipalities have their views on what is important and politicians from the city of Göteborg have other interests. Therefore, the political discussions about the basic principles came as no surprise to us in the project management.

We used a lot of time and energy to keep the discussions going and to make sure that every voice and argument was heard. This process has been ongoing ever since. I believe that understanding between Västtrafik’s owners has grown over time. When it comes to detailed decisions, we sometimes have problems in finding a solution, but I believe that we have consensus about the big issues such as the will to develop public transportation for the benefit of our region.

The fare collection and fare structure systems have been launched step-by-step and we started in March 2006 in the town of Uddevalla. From then on, we’ve successively added town to town and area to area. It took approximately six months to launch the entire zone based system.

During spring 2007 we will take the final step and roll out the check in / check out system in full scale. But before that we will have tested the system thoroughly by letting more and more people use it in real life.

It is absolutely vital to us that our passengers have full confidence in the systems that we use and we are not prepared to take any risks when it comes to their trust or security. The systems must, of course, also safeguard Västtrafik’s revenue.

The vast majority of our passengers now use the Västtrafik card on a daily basis. Throughout the launch, passenger reactions to the new card have been almost entirely positive. People in general appreciate the effortlessness of having a personal card for travelling. It’s easy to re-fill the Västtrafik card to make it valid for yet another 30 days in the area of ones choice. We’ve also received appreciation for the possibility of securing your Västtrafik card from illegitimate use in case you lose it. If you are a registered Västtrafik passenger the card can be immediately stopped for use via the Internet. Yet another advantage with the new season card is that it is not personal – the owner can let, for example, family members or friends use it.

Our first goal, to launch one single card for the entire region, was not possible to reach, but in relation to where we stood at the beginning, we have come a long way. Instead of 275 zones we now have a little more than 60.

A few cards from the old systems will be valid for some time to come, but our aim is to use the Västtrafik card only.

Of course, we will still offer single travelling for cash money and we will have some special travelling cards, for example, for tourists and other visitors.

Västtrafik travels are made in an open environment, covering large areas, without fixed gates such as are found in underground systems. Thus, every vehicle features technical equipment to handle almost every possible transaction. In addition we have a number of special points of sales, most of them are located in Göteborg, but there are also customer service offices on central locations in some of our larger towns.

Our system must work equally well on a countryside bus route, on a crowded rush-hour tram, on a regional train connection and on a ferry in the archipelago.

Consequently, our system is in some respects more difficult to operate than the ones used in large cities like Hong Kong or London where they certainly have a lot more passengers, but their systems are closed by means of controlled entrance and exit gates.

A state-of-the-art system

From a technical point of view, the system that we’ve developed is state-of-the-art. We use contact less smart cards for effortless entry and exit on our vehicles and we daily handle approx. 600,000 ticket transactions. All these transactions are stored in the validators, then they are passed on to the driver’s ticket processor and finally, after each shift is closed, all data is sent by GPRS to our back office system for further processing.

As I see it, we are still only at the beginning of a technical development process. Our system comes with vast potential.

Västtrafik is a founding member of Resekortsföreningen RKF, the Travel Card Association in Sweden. This organisation aims at developing a card that will be valid throughout the country and, later, also in the entire Scandinavia. The RKF standard can be seen as a Scandinavian equivalent to European standards like Calypso or ITSO.

Västtrafik has also taken a strategic decision to go for a dual interface card and, thus, take advantage of the EMV standard used by banks and retailers. In a near future we hope to see terminals where you load your Västtrafik card e.g., at the local supermarket. You will be able to use the card for paying a taxi or a parking machine. We want to keep many doors open for such future co-operation.

We will, no doubt, also build loyalty programmes and see multiple-applications for our card owners covering, for example, sport events and exhibitions.

As I see it, public transportation in Västra Götaland is of growing importance to the region as a whole. We must develop our services to suit future wants and needs. We do that by offering smart transportation solutions with the help of an efficient and safe fare collection system and an attractive fare structure system.

We also need to convey consistent information about all the common benefits that public transportation provides, in terms of fewer traffic injuries and deaths, less strain on the environment, better traffic flow, better health and much more.

The message is clear: all who travel with Västtrafik are doing the right thing – they are making a smart choice.

I strongly feel that we gain full attention, both from our politicians in the Västra Götaland region and from the media. Public transportation is more in focus than ever before and our new fare collection and fare structure system will help to make our services even better.

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