The OV-chipkaart story

Transcription

1 FARE COLLECTION MANAGEMENT The OV-chipkaart story A NATIONWIDE INTEROPERABLE FARE COLLECTION SYSTEM IN THE NETHERLANDS

2 Executive Summary OV-chipkaart stands for the new contactless transport card valid across the Netherlands. The program started in 2001 in the mind of the Dutch Ministry of Transport. The OV-chipkaart is now in operation and has quickly become successful for transit service providers and citizens. Flexible, easy to use and powerful, the OVchipkaart brings major benefits to any players in the Dutch transit industry. Beyond technical complexity, the delivery program has concentrated many important challenges that are detailed in this paper. The OV-chipkaart is first the replacement of existing paper tickets by a plastic contactless smart card, containing private fare products, interoperable products and the electronic purse. Thus, a comprehensive governance model between the different operators and authorities has been required, leading to fundamental changes in the ticketing management processes. The OV-chipkaart brings major benefits to any players in the Dutch transit industry In addition, this program has been an opportunity to set up a robust model for interoperability of the fare collection system, called SDOA: fare media, field equipment and back office interfaces have been specified and certified. Last but not least, this program has been and is still an amazing industrial adventure for Thales. Transit authorities, Transport operators and decision makers of the transportation industry can find essential lessons learnt in this document. Building a ticketing system seems to be simple but could become extremely complex when the number of modes of transport and the variety of players become as wide as in the Netherlands. This paper will first describe the key challenges of the OV-chipkaart program. Then, we will detail Thales proposal and implementation. As a third step, we will address an important aspect of the program: the Coordination Contract and the SDOA, System Documentation Open Architecture. Last, we will highlight the main benefits and the further steps. Fare Collection Management 1

3 Challenges of the OV-chipkaart In the late 90s, Dutch citizens used to travel through the country with a number of local fare media and two different paper tickets. They are in a way the roots of the OV-chipkaart. The railway ticket was in use in the network of the railway operator NS, Nederlandse Spoorwegen. The price of the ticket was based on the origin and the destination of the travel and calculated on the travel distance. The Nationale Strippenkaart was in use in cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht for instance. The Strippenkaart is a set of strips, typically 15, and each strip represents a unit that is valid in different areas. As shown besides a trip may require one or several strips. When entering the transport network, an agent stamps the relevant number of strips, or the last one, to validate the Strippenkaart. Distance-based fare policy and interoperable transport units are at the fundaments of the OV-chipkaart: a unique transport card, to be used anywhere, anytime, for any kind of travel, and able to support either local fare products, for example monthly passes for commuters in a city, and interoperable fare product. The paper tickets have a number of limitations that the OV-chipkaart, as a fully contactless electronic media, intends to solve. First, the purchase of a fare product is simplified. Not only travelers can use standard vending machines, but the can also take advantages of digital features such as Internet sales, automatic reload when the balance of the card is below a given value, etc. Second, while validating the product, no stamp is required. The OVchipkaart is presented to a contactless validator that reads and writes onto the card. The fare product validity is automatically checked, a transaction is created, written on the card and sent to the back office. The total duration for such process is less than 300 ms which makes it compatible with boarding into a crowded bus or crossing an automated gate. Last but not least, at the end of the day, every transaction is collected to the back office and is processed for settlement, clearing, and several kinds of reports: finance, usage, etc. Fare Collection Management 2

4 The OV-chipkaart program intended to tackle the security of transport in the Netherlands. On one hand, transport operators were looking for a way to reduce the fraud, by using a more secure fare media, a more secure ticketing system, and introducing systematic validation and control. On the other hand, passenger security had to be improved by using automated gates in the station and thus allowing entry to valid travelers only. One of the key challenges of the OV-chipkaart program was to set up an interoperable solution nationwide, all over the country, regardless the modes of transport and the operators: bus, tram, metro, train, ferry, etc. It is a way to improve mobility for the traveler by easing the transfer between the modes of transport. It is also a way to liberate the transit industry in the Netherlands by introducing new competition at the industrial level and possibly connecting new services: parking, retail, city card, etc. For such objectives, the interoperability must be ensured, trusted and accepted. Such program is definitely complex due to the above challenges, but also due to the number of players and consequently the number of stations, equipment, etc. The table below summarizes the key parameters of the program. In particular, we would highlight the number of provinces, municipalities and transport operators that must join the program and make it possible for every citizen. Key parameters of the OV-chipkaart program Inhabitants 16 millions Finance back office 1 Provinces 12 Ticket office machine 85 Municipalities 16 Ticket control unit 350 Transport Operators 5 Ticketing back-offices 8 Transactions per day 10 millions Ticket vending machines 700 Metro stations 100 Automatic gates 3,200 Train stations 410 Station processing system 175 Busses & Trams 5000 Validators 22,100 In 2001, the Dutch Ministry of Transport enabled the creation of a private transit authority called Trans Link Systems B.V. (TLS), as a joint venture of the major public transport operators. TLS was mandated to coordinate the design, build, and test program and operate the central system of the OV-chipkaart over time. TLS was established by the regional bus operator Connexxion, the city operators GVB (Amsterdam), HTM (The Hague), the RET (Rotterdam) and the NS (Dutch Railway Company). Together these five companies provide 80% of public transport services in the Netherlands. Fare Collection Management 3

5 TLS and the operators put in place the basis of the OV-chipkaart program. With Thales expertise on the standardization work coming from ISO24014, the key roles of the transport operators and TLS were defined: - The transport operators are responsible for transporting travelers and operating ticketing in their network. They are in charge of defining the private fare products, promoting the electronic purse and selling interoperable products when appropriate, buying ticketing infrastructure and maintaining it. - TLS is responsible for the interoperability of the system, the certification process and the definition of the interoperable fare products. TLS manages the card base, anonymous and personalized cards, performs the clearing and the settlement of the revenue. The below chart briefly describes the revenue sharing principles. First, travelers purchase fare products or reload their electronic purse. The money goes to the bank or to the sales agent. At the end, all the money flows to TLS. A part of the revenue (x% and y%) is directly sent back to the sales agent and the clearing operator to cover their own costs. The major part of the revenue is dedicated to finance transport operators and shared in a fair manner depending on the usage rates. The citizens travel through the network and each validation is recorded. From these trip records, the revenue sharing operator calculates usage rates. These rates represent the real usage of traveler through the different transport networks. Fare Collection Management 4

6 The core of the OV-chipkaart program is the definition of the electronic purse and interoperable fare products, ie student passes or equivalent. The electronic purse is stored in the card and deducted at each validation step. The traveler is invited to validate at each important step of the trip: when he steps into a transport mode (check-in) and when he steps out of the same transport mode (check-out). To make it viable in an intermodal, multi-operator environment, the purse is ruled as shown on the drawing below. On the railway, the purse value shall be over 20 in order to limit the risk of non-payment. At check-in, 20 are deducted from the purse and the inspection agent will be able to verify this by reading the card with a handheld equipment. At the end of the trip on the train, the traveler checks out and the exact fare is calculated. The validator writes back on the card the correct value of the purse. The traveler can continue his trip by getting into a bus. While checking in, the downpayment is only 4 and the exact price is calculated at check-out depending on the exact length of the journey. Increasing mobility is a key driver for the OV-chipkaart. As a consequence, the traveler benefits from discounts if he transfers from one mode to another mode. The purse is adjusted at every check-out depending on previous transfers. Fare Collection Management 5

7 Our proposal and implementation With the strong commitment to meet the challenges of the OVchipkaart program, Thales built the consortium called EastWest. Such a name came from the roots of the proposed solution, fundamentally inspired from the Thales experience in Hong Kong shared by MTR Corporation and Octopus Card Limited. From East to West, the EastWest consortium was born to serve the OV-chipkaart program. Along with Thales, the consortium was strong with two other partners: Accenture, the consulting company and Vialis, a Dutch company, specialized in electrical installation and maintenance. One of the EastWest strength was the complementarity of the three partners and the robustness of each individual company. The EastWest consortium structured its offer with: - Accenture, taking over the card management and revenue clearing operations - Vialis, responsible for the site intervention, replacement and repair - Thales, providing the ticketing systems, based on the experience of Hong Kong for the metros and trains, the experience of fleet management in France for the bus and trams, and the innovative Open Architecture. Thales wanted the architecture of the ticketing systems to be as open as possible for a straight forward interoperability. By Open, we meant to use standard protocols in any possible areas, use distributed security with a Public Key Infrastructure and define a transaction model that was specific to the Netherlands, but free and accessible by anybody. EastWest proposal had been preferred to others competitors proposing solutions like in London or in Singapore. Finally, EastWest was awarded by TLS in 2003 and started to work on seven different contracts: - One with each transport operator: NS, RET, GVB, Connexxion and HTM. - One with TLS, for the card management and the central back office - And the coordination contract, committing the consortium to coordinate the different players, for the objectives of the interoperability of the OV-chipkaart. Since this topic is particularly unusual in a ticketing system development, we will detail deeper the concept in the next section. Rather quickly the technical teams started the specification of the system and prepared some pilot experimentation in order to check the validity of the specified concepts. We had to progress quickly with TLS and start the operations of the central back office as soon as possible. Once the central back office in operations, the other operators would be in the position to connect to it and test their own back office. Fare Collection Management 6

8 OV-chipkaart for the train The railway operator, NS, chose the Hoekse Lijn for the pilot. This line goes from Rotterdam to the sea side as shown in yellow beside. This line was not too crowded during the duration of the pilot but enough for us to test the full system and the equipment: ticket vending machines, gates and validators. We ran the pilot until 2005, when NS decided to implement on the other lines. Two other lines followed, Flevolijn and Schipollijn, in red besides and then, the full network. We had to install about 2000 validators on more than 250 stations in order to prepare the Go Live in October 1 st After about one year operation, NS took the decision to stop the paper ticket. In order to secure the business, 90% of the travelers should check-in at least once during their trip. As a consequence, NS decided to close 62 additional stations, and awarded Thales for the procurement of 1400 automatic gates. OV-chipkaart for the bus The bus operator Connexxion had a different approach for several reasons. On one hand, installing equipment in a bus fleet has nothing to do with installing equipment in a train station. Buses move all day, and the time left for installation and commissioning is rather short. On the other hand, Connexxion wanted to take the opportunity of the OV-chipkaart to start a large improvement plan on its buses. In addition to the ticketing, Connexxion wanted to introduce an innovative bus architecture, having a single bus computer to host the different applications: the ticketing and the fleet management system. In a standard bus architecture, the two applications have their own computer and usually their own driver interfaces. It leads to heavy operations where the driver has to log on two times and follow two screens. Connexxion wanted a simplified bus architecture. Thus Thales installed only one bus computer, hosting the two applications: the ticketing application which controls Fare Collection Management 7

9 the on-board validators and synchronizes with the back office at the depot station and the fleet management application, from third party, controlling the bus route and timing. The architecture concept is as shown below. Since the technical challenge was important, the implementation has been in two phases. During 2003 and 2004, Connexxion tested the ticketing application. Then, once validated, we introduced the fleet management until the acceptance of the system in OV-chipkaart for Thales As shown in the two previous sections, the requirements from one operator to another operator were particularly different. For example, Thales has not designed and provided a single system for the Netherlands, but eight different back offices, each of them having their specificity and own characteristics but compliant to the SDOA. This has had an important industrial impact. The first challenge was to find enough resources in order to fulfill our commitments and meet the deadlines. The core expertise, for instance the fare engine, had been identified and a new organization put in place to serve this objectives. Another challenge was to set up a complete test facility in Thales facilities in the city of Brétignysur-orge, France (91). Fare Collection Management 8

10 Actually, the requirement in terms of system availability is very high, from 98% to 99.95% depending on operators. Thus, we had to ensure that every use case and every piece of software could be properly tested. For this, 1300 m 2 were dedicated to test and integration platforms. This huge amount of space dedicated to testing ticketing is unique and Thales is proud to propose this to its customers. It has been and is still used for several purposes: internal development and integration, automated testing, factory acceptance tests, integration with third party applications, replication of in-situ use cases, etc. The testing facility has been completed with a real bus line around our site in Brétigny-sur- Orge. As mentioned earlier, it is very complex to test a bus system because the bus moves all day. The installation of a new ticketing system shall not stop nor disturb the operations of the bus operator and the mobility of the citizens. As a consequence, we decided to develop our own bus line, with several stops around the buildings and a real depot system. All this connected to the integration platform. The truck, as shown above, can be configured with different bus architectures, Connexxion or QBuzz and we could replicate use cases that were found in The Netherlands. It has been a useful tool for the OV-chipkaart project and is now a powerful test device for our on-going projects. Implementing a ticketing system is a first step, but the story does not stop here. The OVchipkaart must be in operations for the next decade. Thales is fully aware of this and has not only built a full solution for design, build, test a system, but also provides services for the full life cycle of the system. While the maintenance activities were started by Vialis as part of the EastWest consortium, Thales wanted to offer an integrated solution to the transport operators. Thus, in 2010, Thales took over the maintenance activities. Thales now features a 150+ staff for ticketing operators in the Netherlands, providing their support to the daily operations of the OV-chipkaart. Fare Collection Management 9

11 Coordination Contract & SDOA The OV-chipkaart is unique. Any ticketing systems could pretend this. However, in the OVchipkaart case, it is the first time ever that the coordination of the different partners is mandated to the industrial consortium. EastWest signed the Coordination Contract and thus was responsible for coordinating the different operators, especially on interoperable aspects and fare policy. Coordination means also ensuring that the interoperability will not fail due to divergence of the different players. Coordination means bringing enough support to anybody so that the different operators can benefits of the mutual progress for a successful Go Live of the OV-chipkaart. In addition, EastWest was responsible for writing the System Documentation Open Architecture and mandated Thales to make it. This huge work has been performed in three major steps. In 2004: Initialization & first version. Thales proposed a first draft to put in place the main concepts and the associated vocabulary. Schematically, Thales defined the five levels of a ticketing system as shown below. Then, TLS selected the scope of interoperability. Schematically, these are the three main interfaces for interoperability, the level 4 interface to the financial back office, the level 1/2 interface and the fare media layout. In more detail, we can list below the scope of the SDOA. Fare Collection Management 10

12 Supervision and event Out of the scope Maintenance and diagnosis features Agent management Man Machine interfaces Equipment housing On-board architecture ie communication between the bus computer and the validator In the scope General design of the ticketing system L4 interface and L1/2 interface Downstream parameters, action list Security mechanisms Ticketing Use cases Fare media Layout In 2005 and 2006, Thales and TLS performed amendments of the document following the pilot experimentations and the roll out. In particular, the card layout & the description of the interfaces were deeply detailed. All this process was concluded by the publication of the document on the TLS web site. Last, in 2007, Thales organized the handover to TLS and together prepared the certification process until A test company was mandated to develop the testbench and perform the certifications of the different parts. The certification process is described besides. The general principles are simple. Thales develops the ticketing system from the reference document. The test company develops the SDOA tester from the same document and then performs the tests. If the test fails, Thales fixes the issue and comes to the test again. If the test is OK, the equipment is certified. However, the story has been a little more complicated. Since every operator had specific requirements, Thales had to perform the tests on each piece of equipment, multiplied by the number of operators. A huge number of certification steps have been performed. On the other hand, the testbench was not finalized when we started the first round of certification. Some identified issues could either be due to development problems in the system but also in the SDOA tester. They could also be due to difference of interpretation of the reference document SDOA 3.1. This situation occurred several times and led to the refinement of the overall certification process. Finally, all Thales equipment were certified in 2009, quickly followed by other vendors Fare Collection Management 11

13 Benefits & Further steps The interoperable fare collection management developed by Thales brings many benefits. Amongst others, we can highlight here those which were proven in the field. Secure and reliable revenue collection Metro and train operators in the Netherlands decided to close stations with automated gates from Thales. Thanks to the contactless technology, life cycle cost of such equipment can be better controlled. The immediate effect is of course the reduction of the fraud and the security of the transportation network. On the other hand, Thales new systems ensure reliable transaction records, from the equipment on the field, through the back offices, up to the central back office. From these records, the revenue clearing and settlement down to the operators can be performed. Less fraud and reliable revenue collection means secured business for the operators. Moving from the paper ticket to an electronic media gives a lot more flexibility on the way to define and use the fare products. By introducing automatic reload of the electronic purse while crossing a gate, or product sales through a web server, passengers and operators get benefits. Passengers avoid queuing at the station. It is less time wasted, more time for his own travel. As a result, the ticketing becomes easy and the transport attractive. Operators reduce the cash handling at the ticket vending machines or the ticket office. This means a reduction of the possible frauds and an improvement of their own productivity. Thales, with its continuing leadership position maintained over the past forty years, has built a comprehensive interoperability model in the SDOA. In particular, the System Documentation Open Architecture has defined the interoperability at the equipment level. One piece of equipment can be replaced by another one if both are certified. For the last decade, a real competitive market has appeared at the equipment level and transport operators take now benefits of the best prices and the freedom of choice for their vendor. Fare Collection Management 12

14 The question is now: how to get even more benefits of such fare collection system? There is still some room for improvement. As a first example, we can mention the introduction of new media as a means for transport. It could be a media replacing the existing smart card, like the contactless bank card. More likely, it will be a NFC-enabled phone emulating the existing OV-chipkaart. With his own phone, the passenger will not only be able to validate and open the automatic gates, but also get information about the real time traffic conditions, next arrival time, etc. On the other hand, the operator can take benefits of the huge amount of data already available in the system. Days after days, transactions are recorded and stored. They carry precious information about the passengers: how do they use the transportation network? What are their behaviors while moving from point A to point B? Data analytics by Thales combined with simulation and optimization are amazing tools now available to help operators and authorities. Extracting knowledge from hidden data, here is the next challenge! Extracting Knowledge from your Data! About Thales Thales is a global technology leader for the defence & security and the aerospace & transport markets. In 2011 the company generated revenues of 13 billion with 67,000 employees in 56 countries. Thales has an exceptional international footprint, with operations around the world working with customers and local partners. Within transportation activities, Thales has a large number of ticketing references and especially the unique nationwide implementation in the Netherlands: the OV-chipkaart. Thales has already won worldwide contracts, as in Auckland, Bangkok, Delhi, Denmark, France, Mexico, Lisbon, South Africa and Taiwan. More info about Revenue Collection Systems, please contact info-rcs@thalesgroup.com Fare Collection Management 13