MaaS is the future of ticketing

More and more places are seeking Mobility as a Service and Conduent Transportation is ready to help

 

 
Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is a concept that has been around for years but has so far failed to fulfil its potential. However, Conduent Transportation believes that its time may have now come and that MaaS will increasingly shape the future of transport – and therefore the future of transport ticketing.

Conduent is in a position to track global trends. It has been helping transport clients for more than 50 years and operates in more than 25 countries.

The company is a leading provider of automated and analytics-based transport solutions for government agencies. These solutions, spanning roadway charging and management, and advanced transit, enable streamlined and personalised services for citizens.

Based in Valence, Conduent Business Solutions France provides transit and intelligent mobility solutions worldwide. This division of the company has been at the forefront of innovation when it comes to contactless fare collection, integration, interoperability and Mobility as a Service.

Conduent’s clients are increasingly demanding solutions that are more customer centric, and the company has responded by investing greatly in user experience or passenger experience – whether that’s the company’s mobile app or its 3D solution for ticketing gates.

Mathias Serre, VP business development and sales international transportation solutions at Conduent Transportation, remarks: “We believe that the future of ticketing is largely relying on MaaS, and MaaS should have, must have, a ticketing component to be successful and meaningful.”

Over the past 12-18 months Conduent Transportation has seen tenders coming in, especially in France, with significant budgets for MaaS. In France, these tenders are at regional level, covering large areas and populations of six or seven million people – a scale at which Serre believes MaaS can be effective. “That’s the journey,” he says. “That’s the journey of our clients. That’s also our journey.”

The journey towards MaaS is gathering pace but there are important milestones to be reached on the way to the desired destination

The journey towards MaaS is gathering pace but there are important milestones to be reached on the way to the desired destination.

Serre, who will address next month’s Transport Ticketing Global 2024 event in London, says that missing elements have so far prevented MaaS from fufilling its potential. Including them can bring the customer experience to the next level.

Among these elements is the widest possible selection of transport modes, broadening the choice, possibilities and convenience for users. Public transport is a vital component – but it must go further than that, embracing solutions such as bike sharing and car sharing. “You start talking about MaaS when you combine public transport modes with private ones – with a bunch of different ones,” Serre explains. “That’s the ultimate goal. By doing so you give clarity and simplicity for people to travel and to combine different modes of travel.”

MaaS also needs to combine trip planning with tariffs, payment and validation – a true one-stop-shop that users can depend on for their travel needs. Travellers don’t just want to know the different ways of completing a particular journey, they want to know how much it will cost and they want an easy way to pay for it. “You don’t have to do multiple purchases in your journey,” says Serre. “You have a journey, and you pay once.”

Furthermore, all of this needs to be dynamic. Users want information and options to be updated in the event of disruption during their journey – with the opportunity, for example, to seamlessly change their fare if they need to switch modes mid-journey.

It’s a huge challenge but it’s one that parts of France and other European countries, and other locations like Australia, are willing to invest in. Conduent Transportation, with its long history in providing complex and robust solutions, is working hard to overcome these hurdles.

“It’s a technical challenge but it’s also largely a commercial challenge, to get the rules amongst the different bodies, to have some clearing mechanisms to allocate the revenues to the different partners which are joining the platforms,” says Serre.

The aim is to provide citizens with a “mobility companion” – a mobile application and a back office behind it.

By seamlessly knitting together different transport modes into a single proposition, Conduent Transportation believes that it can provide users with options that they would not have otherwise considered, and challenge the convenience of the private car. This can help with efforts to decarbonise transport while providing authorities with better data about the nature of transport demand.

Serre explains: “It’s about making people happier. It’s about city planning. It’s about understanding the flows of mobilities, and then for the cities to be able to ask the right questions … We see it as a city planning tool, and a way to organise things.”

Conduent is ready to work with clients to create next generation MaaS. “We have the maturity,” says Serre. “We have the opportunities as well. In the past we were a little bit ahead of the market. That has changed over the past 12-18 months. We have seen big projects, big tenders in the specific MaaS area.”

Content Transportation Solutions

ATLAS Ops Fare Collection

With the ATLAS Ops Fare Collection cities can offer “increased intelligent mobility services” to their citizens, revolutionising transit networks and operations. The platform is deployed in more than 400 public transport networks of all sizes around the world. ATLAS Ops is a ticketing solution that combines two modes of fare media options: Media Based Ticketing and Account-Based Ticketing. Thanks to ATLAS Ops add-ons, operators are expanding and improving their transit offer to provide more data and passenger information. This mobility solution can be extended to incorporate new public transport networks or alternative modes of travel such as sharing services (e.g. car-pooling, car-sharing and bike-sharing).

Mobile Ticketing – SimpliGo

Conduent Transportation’s proven mobile app for transit agencies of all sizes offers a cost-effective and easy-to-implement solution that provides public transport users with the superior contactless experience they expect.

Downloaded over one million times from the Apple Store and Google Play, the Conduent Transportation mobile ticketing app is one of the most successful mobile apps in the USA, with an average of 4.8 stars from over 72,000 reviews. One transit department’s app provides its largest single source of revenue (40%).

By putting all of the information about different transport modes in one place, alongside the ability to purchase a ticket, Mobile Ticketing applications are helping to create a Mobility as a Service proposition.

Conduent 3D Fare Gate Solution

Conduent Transportation’s 3D detection solution for ticket gates makes it possible to discover cases previously impossible to detect, such as a person with a stroller, a small or a big item of luggage, a child or a person in a wheelchair. Already installed in Île-de-France SNCF stations, the system is very adaptable, and new situations can be characterised to enhance the different types of crossing. Therefore, the opening cycle can be adapted on a case-by-case basis.

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mathias Serre is VP business development and sales international transportation solutions at Conduent Transportation, and responsible for developing and promoting attractive transport offerings to clients throughout the world.

He will address the Transport Ticketing Global show in London next month. His presentation, Providing options for all. Enhancing the ticketing experience for regular and occasional passengers with Open Payment, will take place at 11:20 on March 5 in Theatre 2.

 
More about Conduent: www.conduenttransportation.com

 
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.

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