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CIT supports the Universal Rail Ticket

The Universal Rail Ticket (URT) is a promising project in the field of ticket distribution enabling railways to fulfil the requirements for through-tickets imposed by the new PRR. CIT has been at the forefront of this project since its inception, providing its know-how in transport law requirements.

Why is the URT needed?

Contrary to previous ticket lay-outs, which were designed to display only one ticket type and thus in principle one contract of carriage, the URT lay-out is flexible enough to display in one document all the tickets (e.g. NRT, IRT) and different types (e.g. adult, children, dogs) representing one contract of carriage (through-ticket) or separate contracts where applicable, in accordance with the requirements of the new PRR (art. 12) as well as any ancillary services (e.g. reservation, bicycles, luggage). This ticket standard may be used both for international and domestic carriage and is also suitable for multimodal journeys.

Technical parameters

The ticket is to be printed on a variable number of blank A4 pages or displayed on an electronic device. The URT must be specifically provided with a Flexible Content Barcode (FCB) as defined in UIC specification IRS 90918-9 because this barcode, contrary to the previous barcode generations, can hold different kinds of data for different kinds of contracts and ancillary services. The number of pages of the ticket is not limited, and nor are the measures (lengths) of particular parts of the ticket, which depend on the length and complexity of a journey and the ancillary services purchased. The ticket itself is split into four major parts:

Part 1: TCO and summary information zone.

Part 2: Itinerary zone.

Part 3: Distributor information zone.

Part 4: Legal and after-sales information zone.

CIT’s support to the URT

This ticket standard was created by the UIC Ticket Lay-out Group with the support of CIT, especially the CIV Working Group, which provided its expertise on the legal and functional requirements for the ticket, in particular with regard to art. 12 PRR 2021. The crucial issue was CIT’s requirement that the ticket include a clear indicator (e.g. text, specific symbols, or other graphical means) showing which journey legs are not a part of a single contract of carriage (separate contracts), and where appropriate which journey legs form a single contract of carriage (through-ticket).

CIT has adopted this new ticket type as an amendment (Chapter 10) to the Manual for International Rail Tickets (MIRT), which takes effect on December 10 of this year.

jan.vavra(at)cit-rail.org