CALYPSO OfferS interOPerAbiLitY tO PubLiC trAnSPOrt tiCketing
for the first time in europe, travel from one city to another with the same ticketing card.
With CALYPSO, the old dream of a seamless travel with the same ticket in Europe becomes a reality.
For many years, the European Commission and the UITP have been pushing towards a ticketing application which allows traveling in Europe and using public transport in different cities with the same card to pay his trip.
CALYPSO, the secure and open interoperable standard for ticketing proposesthe triAngLe so- lution, which will be soon operational between france and belgium: commuters of the regions of Nord Pas de Calais, Wallonia and Flanders will use everywhere in these regions only one card for all their trips and have smarter options when travelling cross border. This first step of interoperabi- lity of public transport ticketing will be followed by others, because many cities are ready to accept TRIANGLE on their networks, among them Brussels.
What is triAngLe
Triangle provides an answer to the needs for interoperability of ticketing at an international level.
Triangle is a Calypso ticketing application dedicated to interoperability. The Triangle application is integrated within a card or a mobile phone, beside or not a local transport ticketing application used daily.
The Triangle application:
is shared between all the transport networks which accept Triangle
is secured by the same rules and the same shared keys, which ensure the authenticity of the medium and the integrity of the data in a sale or a validation transaction.
can store transport titles of whatever network participating to Triangle.
Consequently Triangle is the simplest scheme of interoperability to implement for the operator, and the most convenient for the customer, who can buy and validate tickets in all Triangle networks with his own card or mobile phone.
Triangle answers mainly to the needs of interoperability between two different tariff areas (2 re- gions for example) for regular commuters, and to the needs of occasional users who spend for business or tourism, a few days in a city or a region.
Each operator using Triangle member decides which transport titles are offered to the customer through the Triangle application. For example, he may decide to limit them to titles for occasional users, such as single tickets, one-day tickets, etc. and to interregional tickets, etc.
Triangle is a scheme of interoperability valid worldwide.
A CuStOmer CASe
to better understand triAngLe, the customer experience.
In order to better understand how it works, let’s take a concrete example of a customer using the possibilities of Triangle.
“I live in Brussels, and I am a daily user of public transport in this city. So I have a MOBIB card, the unified card for all transport networks in Belgium with a monthly season ticket.
All MOBIB cards include a TRIANGLE application; so I know that I can use my personal MOBIB card in all other transport networks which accept TRIANGLE.
I have to go to Lille, in France, for 3 days business, and I know that Lille accept Triangle: I go to Lille, free of mind, with my MOBIB card; in the Lille station, I go directly to a ticket machine, take my Mobib card and reload it with a 3 days ticket of Lille transport. This ticket is registered within the Triangle applica- tion; of course it is accepted on all Lille validators.
It avoids me having to buy a specific media for my ticket and makes really my trip easier.”
With the new possibilities offered by the distant reloading systems on Internet or on mobile phones, the Triangle service may be much better, offering a really seamless solution for the cus- tomer. Let’s again take the same example:
“Rather than buy my Lille ticket at a vending machine in the Lille station, I prefer to prepare my trip in Brussels: using my mobile phone, I directly load my Lille ticket in the Thalys train. It avoids me wasting time when arriving at the Lille station, to look for the vending machine, or to make a queue.”
