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The challenges and opportunities of digitalisation for rail freight carriers
Implementation of the CIT 2012 Security Background, amendments to the Manual for International Rail Tickets, a new Universal Rail Ticket, Open Sales and Distribution Model, e-Ticket Control Database, and development in the TAP TSI Revision were some of the Ticketing-highlights of the last CIV Working Group, which was chaired by Oliver Hirschfeld (DB) on 24 November 2021 as online meeting.
Implementation of the CIT 2012 Security Background
The CIT General Secretariat (GS) is supporting its members which haven’t yet shifted to the CIT 2012 Security Background; the final deadline to issue tickets with the old security background is already this year on 31 December 2021. During the meeting it was reported by Jan Vavra from the CIT GS on current state of play in implementation of the CIT 2012 Security Background. The overview shown during the meeting brought a positive message: The most of members are already using the new security background or are just before its implementation.
Amendments to the Manual for International Rail Tickets
CIV Working Group identified during the session following issues which will be a subject of ongoing works on the Manual for International Rail Tickets: The old CIT security backgrounds and obsolete manual and replacement tickets will be decommissioned, while a new chapter on Universal Rail Ticket will be included. In any case, revision of Passenger Rights Regulation (PRR) will be also in a focus, especially new requirements on “through-ticketing” coming from revised regulation.
Universal Rail Ticket, Open Sales and Distribution Model and e-Ticket Control Database
The UIC representative, David Sarfatti, presented the outcomes of the ongoing works related to the Universal Rail Ticket (URT). This new ticket which is being developed together with Flexible Content Barcode (FCB) and the new distribution interface and data exchange OSDM is bringing solutions to implement “through-ticket” as foreseen by the EU in the PRR Recast. The URT ticket is flexible enough to deal with two possible legal scenarios:
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multiple journey legs on one ticket representing a through ticket,
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multiple journey legs on one ticket representing multiple contracts of carriage (indication on the ticket). An indicator showing which legs belong together and constitute a through ticket is included in the standard.
Furthermore, icons, lay-out of the ticket and semantic of the ticket as such were deeply evaluated by extended customer experience survey which was run by SNCB and proposed ticket reflects the outcomes of this examination.
Revision of TAP-TSI
Representatives of the CER Frauke Quik (NS) and Christian Weber (SNCF) reported on the newest outcomes of the revision of the TAP-TSI. A creation of technical documents ERA TAP TD B 13 (OSDM) with its extension related to submission of passenger complaints and ERA TAP TD B 14 (eTCD) belong currently to the main challenges in the field of ticketing. Furthermore, CER colleagues explained deeply historical background and current state of play of RICS codes (4-digital numeric) and future requirements of ERA on Company Codes which will be changed to alphanumeric from 1 January 2026.