Overview
The project expected to significantly lower the barriers to mobility and encourage the use of public rather than private transport, contributing to a reduction of carbon emissions and a reduction or elimination of paper tickets, thus further enhancing the impact of smart media on environment and on the efficiency of public transport.
It was possible to tailor the media to assist specific groups (e.g. existing concessionary travellers, benefit recipients or part-time workers) thereby supporting the Social Inclusion Agenda. The project was based on delivering an ICT environment that supports nomadic passengers. It was delivered through work packages covering trust modelling, privacy modelling, common applications and interoperable media, model of IFM organisations and supporting back office ICT system interfaces. It was managed to ensure effective and efficient consensus and dissemination of best practice among all stakeholders.
The project was designed to provide world leadership in its segment and to deliver results which can be transferred to areas outside of the transportation sector world-wide. It allowed manufacturers and suppliers to offer the end-to-end, lossless nature of IFM the platform and transactions in other fields, thereby reducing time to market and lowering the cost of implementing other comparable schemes.
This project set out to make public transport more user-friendly by facilitating seamless accessibility to different public transport networks. In 2015 payment processes shall no longer be a barrier for the users of public transport.
The objective of the 'Interoperable Fare Management Project' (IFM Project) was to provide travellers with common styles of contactless media throughout Europe which can be used for multiple transport products in different geographic areas and for sustainable modal switching, such as the use of 'Park and Ride', unlike existing smart cards which are restricted to specific city or regional geographies.
This project was aimed at making the mobility of people more efficient and environmentally sustainable by facilitating informed modal switching and the seamless accessibility of public transport. It aimed at innovative, safe and reliable ticketing and fare management across Europe using interoperable smart media with the specific aim of encouraging increased usage of public transport.
The work plan and its work packages are designed to facilitate the following operational impacts:
- Greater awareness of the benefits of applying smartcard enabled ICT Solutions to Implement harmonised Interoperable Fare Management for scheme for operators, customers and government across Europe.
- The dissemination of knowledge of how to set up an Interoperable Fare Management scheme, the ICT systems, the players, their roles, and how to achieve the maximum benefits.
- The spreading of excellence through the description of best practice in meeting European standards.
- The respect of privacy through the adoption of a common privacy model compatible with the business needs.
- The enhancement of security and minimisation of fraud by the adoption of a shared trust model.
Funding
Results
Project outcomes and the strategy for implementation of Interoperable Fare Management across Europe are described in the Road map for the long term development strategy.
- Roadmap
The project developed a road map towards the Europe-wide concept of Interoperable Fare Management by providing Transport authorities of the Member States with a toolset to build new fare and distribution agreements in order to progressively implement EU-wide Interoperable Fare Management. - Trust model
The minimum of common features - the features that are required from an interoperable point of view - of an European Trust Model and the requirements for an European Secure Application Module (EU-SAM) have been defined.
A Trust Model is a tool that helps one visualise and understand the degree of confidence that is intentionally or unintentionally granted to individuals and/or systems, based on the associated risks that are inherent with granting this confidence. The more completely the trust model is defined, the greater awareness one will gain of the threats and vulnerabilities and especially the risks based on those threats and vulnerabilities. The Trust Model should describe how trusted transactions can be made between different fare areas when an unknown customer uses an unknown smart card. - Privacy model
A set of common rules were proposed for all European countries as an appropriate compromise between information needed for an appropriate services management and customers privacy protection, involving transport operators against undue dissemination of personal data. - The Applications and Interoperable Media
The common requirements for transport contactless media and the benefits of multi-application media to enlarge interoperability have been identified. - IFM organisation
The key output of one of the work packages is the proposal for an EU-IFM Alliance that complies fully with the identified organisational requirements.
The developed organisation model meets the following essential requirements:- help the customer to find the appropriate application and product(s),
- provide downloading of the local or EU Application in a secure manner,
- sell the most appropriate Product in a secure manner,
- support cashless payment in the distribution channel chosen by the customer in a secure manner,
- support the acceptance by the service operator,
- support the convenient use
Strategy targets
An efficient and integrated mobility system: Service quality and reliability