From cross-border ticketing to cross-border MaaS

What has Aachener Verkehrsverbund (AVV) been doing in order to develop an inclusive, efficient and profitable cross-border ticketing system?

My department at AVV focuses mainly on ID ticketing, or as it’s now more commonly known, account-based ticketing (ABT).

We have been testing an account-based ticketing approach here in the cross-border region between the German and Dutch sides. We’ve tested it on cross-border bus lines and had more than 500 test users who tested the whole system together with us in daily operation and provided us with feedback on it. We found that having an account-based ticketing scheme first and foremost benefits the user – which of course is the most important thing.

We provided the test users with chip cards on the German and Dutch sides so that they could travel across the border with only one chip card. In reality, there are different systems in use between Germany and the Netherlands, so these users would usually have to travel using two different chip card systems, based on different technical standards. We tried to bridge those standards by adding an interoperable layer – that is what we tested within the ABT approach.