Buying tickets to access public transport could become a thing of the past. A new suite of smart mobility solutions from Hitachi allows passengers, city planners, and transport operators to better connect, scale and optimise their entire transportation networks.
The suite includes the smart ticketing app 360Pass, which can help passengers to access multiple modes of transport without even removing their phones from their pockets.
If there is one thing I didn't miss during the Covid lockdown, it was my commute.
Every morning I turn off my alarm, get ready for the day and get into my car. When I parked at the train station, I would queue to buy a ticket for the parking, and then I would queue to purchase a ticket for the train. Once I got into the city, I might use one of the bike rental services that have popped up on every corner, logging in with a different app for each service.
Of course, this same challenge doesn't just represent my commute but the experience of millions of people every day. There is so much friction with end-to-end public transport - especially when taking a journey unfamiliar to you - that sometimes it's easier to make one big decision instead of making lots of smaller ones.
This means taking the car, even if I know deep down that the journey may take even longer or parking may be even more expensive than my overall trip. The truth is, like most passengers, my transport choices are driven by convenience and cost more than by carbon emissions alone.
But this situation is not sustainable.
It's worse for me - driving in cities is generally more expensive - it's also bad for the city I live in - congestion costs cities billions in lost productivity, and traffic kills over 1.3 million every year. It also negatively affects the environment, both global CO2 emissions and local air quality emissions like NOx.
So what are we doing about it?
More seamless, sustainable transport.
Last year, Hitachi Rail launched its new Lumada Intelligent Mobility Management suite of smart mobility solutions.
Who is the solution for?
It's for city planners and transportation operators to introduce and for passengers to use, all designed to enable more seamless, sustainable journeys at the best possible Total Cost of Mobility (TCM).
For city planners and transport operators, the suite can help to create a digital twin of an entire public transportation network, mapping the flow of passengers, trains, buses, and even the usage of electric charging stations in a single visualisation.
You can see how buses, trains, and bike services are connected in real-time, and you can run scenario planning based on busy crowding or weather data. You can even zoom into an individual vehicle to check it's cleanliness, maintenance status, and predicted crowding levels as it moves from stop to stop.
If you're a city planner, transportation operator, or just a nerd like me that's pretty exciting!
But as the Global Head of Hitachi's Smart Ticketing business in Hitachi Rail, I'm even more excited about how our smart ticketing capabilities can help passengers directly.
It's called 360Pass, and it could revolutionise the way that people move through cities.
360Passis a new passenger mobile app available on iOS and Android in select cities. It allows passengers to access all the traditional means of planning and paying for a journey across any mode of transport. More choice on how you travel, choice and have you pay, and all of it is better connected and personalised for the user.
It has the traditional features you might expect: Using e-tickets, QR codes, tap in tap out, etc. But as our launch project in the city of Genova is demonstrating, soon you won't need to take your phone out of your pocket to access public transport.
Queuing for tickets could be made entirely redundant - here's how it works:
In Genova, we have fitted over 7000 sensors to bus stops, train stations, private hire electric vehicles, and even for the local funicular and rack railway.
Users of the app, which is branded GoGoGe by local operator AMT, only need to register for an account, connect their credit card details, and activate Bluetooth.
The rest of the work is done between the user's smart phone and the Bluetooth transponders at each point of the users' journey.
Then based on the transportation used, the optimum fare is calculated, taking a lot of friction out of the entire process for the passenger.
You can imagine what my commute would look like now. I set my alarm, get ready, and step out of the house. With Bluetooth activated, I park at the train station and get out of my car. I don't stop to buy a parking ticket, but I don't queue for train tickets. I get out of the car locket and walk onto the train.
At the other end, I pick up an E scooter, which unlocks automatically, and detects my smartphone and where I'm using the service. At the end of the day, I do the same thing in reverse, and at 3 am the next morning, my account is charged the optimum fare based on the transport I used.
Smart ticketing built to scale
There are a lot of other great features and benefits to the 360Pass app, which make it an attractive offer for any city.
From contextualising personalised passenger information about journey times, connectivity, and predicted crowd levels on a station-by-station basis, smart mobility is about to get smarter. It just might not include any tickets.
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