Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - Co-Active (CO-modal journey re-ACcommodation on associated Travel serVices)

Teaser

\"# Context:Shift2Rail European initiative delivering focused Research & Innovation in the Railway industry is composed of five Innovation Programmes (IPs).Under the IP4 scope “IT solutions for attractive Railway services”, the Travel Shopping, Booking & Ticketing topics...

Summary

\"# Context:
Shift2Rail European initiative delivering focused Research & Innovation in the Railway industry is composed of five Innovation Programmes (IPs).
Under the IP4 scope “IT solutions for attractive Railway services”, the Travel Shopping, Booking & Ticketing topics are addressed by the on-going Co-Active project.

# Challenges:
Currently, a large number of different ticketing, payment & validation systems exist across operators & transport modes.
For the traveller, this means having to switch between multiple websites in order to book & pay for each episode of the planned journey.
Moreover, when travelling, several tickets need to be validated individually at the right moment.
Although, is currently difficult to achieve interoperability between different booking & ticketing systems at regional or even national scale. Fragmentation of ticketing Medias (different smart cards) and ticketing products (transport offers by different providers in the multimodal ecosystem) remains an important issue.

# Objectives:
The main goal of Co-Active project is to improve the previously explained situation, by:
1. Providing a smart, fast & easy door-to-door Travel Shopping solution, allowing multimodal Journey Planning & Shopping of Itineraries as well as associated ancillary services. The proposed solution will:
- Take into account the first & last miles via a ‘one-stop shop’ integrating urban, coach, rail & air transportation offers as well as personal & shared transport offers (e.g. Car Sharing, Bike Sharing & Car Park Management).
- Enrich Journey Planning functionalities by ensuring the journey re-Accommodation (re-planning).
- Refine the Offer Building with more information, alternatives, fare rules and ancillary services.
2. Providing a smart, fast & easy door-to-door Booking & Ticketing solution, allowing multimodal Travel (Fare Product) Booking, Payment (Issuing) & re-Accommodation (Cancellation or Replacement). The proposed solution will:
- Take into account the travel rights in order to manage a smart re-Accommodation of the multimodal journey.
- Allow the traveller to easily book, pay, modify & cancel a complete or an episode of the multimodal travel as well as the associated ancillary services.
- Ensure an instantaneous issuing of the appropriate dematerialised Entitlement/Token/Embodiment (e.g. Electronic or Mobile Ticket, QR Code...), which is readable by the different validation & inspection devices.
- Ensure the correct clearing & settlement for business actors.
3. Simplifying the B2B & B2C contractual management in order to ease the understanding of each actor\'s rights/responsibilities as well as the traveller guaranties, especially in case of disruption needing a prompt re-Accommodation. This will make the traveller more confident in reaching his destination on schedule.

# Constraints:
- Existing systems must be kept mainly unchanged (infrastructure, legacy equipment).
- Achieve interoperability through minimum standardization.
- Ensure market uptake with a near-zero cost (facilitates new comers integration).
- Horizontal scalability through distributed micro-service environments.\"

Work performed

\"# Main achieved work:
- Specification work progressed & CREL releases submitted for WP1, 2 & 3
- Improvement of Scenarios, Use Cases & User Stories allowing the:
o One-Stop-Shop capability Enrichment,
o After-sales services management,
o ETE Issuing and Clearing & Settlement process management,
o Proposing of a payment-settlement solution for retailed products and services,
- Progressing implementation activities & developing software components related to the:
o Journey Planning/Offers Building; enabling a comprehensive choice of offers from modes/operators able to answer customers\' mobility requests,
o Issuing orchestration and Clearing & Settlement process management,
o Virtual Credit Card Payment; enabling a secured & fast clearing and settlement between TSPs and 3rd party retailers,
o After-Sales Orchestration; enabling the replacement and/or the cancelation of the fare product based on the TSP confirmation,
- Several technical workshops held in order to monitor technical coherence at project level
- Several collaboration workshops held at IP4 level with the lighthouse project and with the ongoing OC & CFM projects
- Maintain the engineering design methodology set up during the 2nd period to facilitate the Ecosystem design: Team for Capella solution and Capella coaching program
- Maintain the integration & testing tooling infrastructure set up during the 2nd period: GitLab, Mantis Bug Tracker
- Dissemination & communication infrastructure was set up
- Achievement of several dissemination events (TRA2018, Mid-Term event, InnoTrans2018):
o Dissemination of project\'s objectives & achievements during TRA2018, and sharing of a project’s poster,
o Achievement of the project’s mid-term event,
o Success of the Quick Win InnoTrans: IP4 demonstration and projects\' achievements sharing,
- Workshop with the Regulation Bodies (Advisory Board Meeting) were held,
- GA amendment and of project dashboard management allowing an easy reporting during the related events (SteCo, TMT, etc.),

# Deliverables Status:
- WP1, WP2, WP3 and WP4 CREL and pre-FREL deliverables were submitted (except deliverable D1.3 which was not submitted during the 3rd reporting period),
- Deliverables D5.6 “Project Newsletter 2” and D5.5 “Recommendations and conclusions of the meeting with the Regulation Bodies” were submitted,

# Milestones Status:
- MS1 “Ontology and Specifications Internal Release 1” was met for WP1, 2 & 3
- MS2 “Core Release (CREL)” was met for - WP2, 3, 4, 5 & 6
- MS3 “Ontology and Specifications Internal Release 2” was met for WP 2 & 3\"

Final results

\"# Progress beyond the state of the art:
Within this 3nd period, the project was focused on:
- Making journey planning & travelling easier than going through different booking, payment and ticketing processes for each travel episode of a door-to-door journey,
- Enrich the Offer Building with more information, alternatives, fare rules & ancillary services,
- Ensuring an easy booking, issuing, modification & cancelation of a multimodal travel episode as well as the associated ancillary services,
- Simplifying a part of the B2C processes by handling the after-sales process and a part of the B2B processes by handling the Clearing & Settlement process,


# Expected Results, Potential Impacts & Disruptive Concepts:
Fulfilling Traveller’s needs & Achieving Trust are the most important issues. Travellers need to trust not only the transport provider(s), but also the ecosystem itself. They need to feel confident & protected.
Payment Transaction should be perceived as simple and safe. Several forms of payment should be accepted as well as the choice of pre-paid and post-paid payment schemes.
Final Prices should reflect those shown during the Journey Planning phase.
Enabling choice of several ticketing media; including contactless card, QR-code, biometric identification... to ensure a Seamless Travel Experience.
Interoperable loyalty schemes redeemable between transport operators or against others goods and services.\"

Website & more info

More info: http://projects.shift2rail.org/s2r_ip4_n.aspx.