Imperatives

Capacity Planning
Providers of all types of transport systems in, for instance, the UK are under immense pressure to increase capability. With expansion being a lengthy and expensive process, providers are seeking to make the most of their existing infrastructure and IT may well provide the answer. In air travel, we are seeing an increased focus on yield, revenue management, and also on load factor, which is an indication of capacity utilization. Additionally, optimization between passengers and cargo is important.

Real Time
The rise of mobility has led to a new demand in transport. Beginning with mobile ticketing, trains are now seeing a burgeoning of uses for real-time technology, such as catering terminals providing stock information and other real-time information. The biggest driver for real time is the challenge of ticket authentication. With new modes of ticket delivery (such as printing at home), staff on the train must be able to reliably authenticate tickets and prevent the reuse of single-use tickets or e-tickets.

On top of this, the mobile systems are also developing a demand for other real-time information to be available on trains and buses, first to staff and eventually to customers. Real-time information concerning live travel news and other issues is enabled by mobile technology. It seems there is an endless appetite for mobility, and at the moment the only constraint is the reliability of such communication.

Sustainability
Some critics are suggesting that the credit crunch will spell the end for sustainability as we know it. This is certainly not the case in transport— rising fuel costs alone form a strong case.

The reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels is a strategic target for the EU, for economic and environmental reasons. The EU is going to define a catalogue of ‘good practices’ for mobility. These undoubtedly will include boosting the use of collective transport for individuals and the optimization of systems for management and exploitation.

We cannot evaluate yet how the effects of the economic crisis will impact the active policies of the EU, but it is likely that interest in reducing pollutant gases will not be diminished, and so it should remain at the top of the agenda for any organization in the market.

Business trends

Staff Retention
The industry is seeing a fall in the level of skilled workers and new graduates. The image of Transport as lacking glamor may be to blame for this, or perhaps the complexities that come with the not-quite-public, notquite- private nature of many Transport organizations. The comparatively high remunerations for contractors may also play a part in the decision of many who leave organizations, plus the transferable skills from this industry are in demand in others.

Transport is arguably one of the most forward-thinking industries, with huge challenges to solve and exciting new technologies with which to solve them. It remains to be seen how long it will take the lowly reputation caused by underfunding over the last few decades to be undone in the eyes of the prospective employee.

Effects of Tic ket Evolutions
Migrating tickets from paper to new fulfillment media brings costs savings through shifting the cost of sale onto the consumer, but presents new challenges in the shape of authentication, validation, and transaction. Each new option brings a new need and challenge: more automatic ticket machines require more space in already overcrowded stations; self-printing of tickets or e-tickets may remove the issue of space in ticket halls but are harder to validate than paper-based methods, and smartcards can be prone to hacks or to bad code and read errors.

The real challenge for Transport Operators of all types is not so much investing in the right fulfillment media, as in ensuring the reliable validation of the tickets. Until this is entirely dealt with, it is unlikely we will see a massshift to newer methods.

The Business of Passenger Transport
The use of RFID / NFC for the payment of multimodal transport services will be a key area in the success of new media and is expected to be seen initially in urban and metropolitan areas, which represent more than the 75% of the total transport system.

Charging the travel cards will generate flows of liquidity for financial institutions. This will reach a point where the public administration responsible for Transport will generate tenders for managing these flows and the recharging of the cards.

Virtualizing the Workforce
Transport is a heavily seasonal business and the workforce requirements are a reflection of this. Current models rely too much on expensive contractors being brought in because there is no need for the role all year round. A flexible employment model would allow staff to be reassigned roles that fit the needs of the business throughout the year. Stratifying roles to allow multimodality between roles that demand a similar level of skill will allow savings to be made without jeopardizing the complex requirements of an organization.

Knowing the Customer
The increase in self-service is reducing the amount of direct contact with the customer at a time when organizations want to have more contact with their customers, to try to increase loyalty. In the full contacts eco-systems, across a range of employees from pre- to post-travel sales, getting close to the customer and really understanding them is key.

There are benefits in sharing passenger information through the whole value chain and across different modes of transport for multi-modal journeys.

Customer Experience
Knowing the customer enables organizations to better capitalize on retail opportunities both during travel and when transferring between journey stages, while at the same time enhancing the customer experience.

It also enables organizations to offer different travel experiences to suit different needs and pockets—for example, a more expensive ticket could enable faster flow through an airport / port / station.

The Crunch
The recession is taking its toll on passenger transport as it is with many other markets. The difference is that passenger transport where large investments are required take a long time to see returns, and this current climate is not so conducive to this business model.

Consumers economizing on necessities to save for luxuries is having its effect on Transport, as this sector is not perceived by many to be in the luxury category. The first likely target for this is first-class travel, which, although lucrative for Operators, could provide more space on crowded trains.

Virgin has already removed its first-class facilities and others are expected to follow suit. However, this change is not expected in air travel. Instead, airlines are phasing out their own bespoke systems, replacing them with commodity systems in order to lower costs and increase innovation.

Resource Optimization
Within the optimization of timetables system, there remains a human element that ultimately makes the decisions as to how resources are optimized. The everyday disruptive forces on timetables exacerbate the human bottleneck in this process. Automated optimization systems are becoming more and more important in the quest for higher capacity.

Increased Interventionism of Public Authorities
In many countries, central, regional, or local administration bodies, alone or together, have developed active policies to boost passenger transport, principally in cities and metropolitan areas. Payment subsidies have been made either directly to the Transport Operators through service compensations or indirectly by supporting part of the ticket price paid by the passengers.

In this way, the corresponding public agency provides financial compensations for the deficit generated in applying attractive transport prices that do not cover their exploitation costs. This enables them to apply mobility policies such as helping to develop poor areas or reducing car use.

There is a need for expansion and improvement of transport control systems. With better and more detailed information, public authorities can plan for optimization and adapt to new transport demands—not from a profitable point of view, but more from a social and environmental perspective.

Greater Control Needs in the Institutional Agents
In the same way as Transport Operators are affected by the new business model for passenger transport (public-private, where borders are ever more tenuous), governments also require more collaboration from experts who will provide not only knowledge, but also methodologies and tools to support increasingly detailed management models for designing and analyzing the policies impacting on mobility. Moving from sample information to real and complete travel information (offer and demand) is a huge jump in their way of working.

Impact technologies

Business Intelligence (BI) and smart analytics could allow significant improvements in passenger optimization and GPS technology could allow such precise tracking of vehicles to allow increased train frequency and more stable bus frequencies.

Vast assets from signals and track to buses and trains can be better managed with new Next Generation Enterprise Asset Management technologies including remote sensors, GPS, and RFID. These will ensure the state of an asset is available in real-time, along with its location. For workers in remote and difficult environments, this is key to ensuring their safety.

RFID readers will have remote reading of up to one meter and will require new standards and new devices—cards and mobile devices. This will be key to the traceability of passengers (origin-destination), allowing for optimization of routes and enabling improvements in mobility policy definitions (urban and metropolitan routes).

Remote workers and customers will benefit greatly from the new mobile applications, giving them vital remote access to information from anywhere and on any mobile device. These can also streamline ticketing and enhance the traveler’s experience throughout their journey.
Self-service ticketing will also make use of technologies such as NFC for smartcard and mobile payments, giving the opportunity for enhancing customer loyalty through CRM applications. This technology can also be used for ticket-checking, to make travel quicker and slicker for the passenger. NFC is marked as an opportunity to enable self-service customs for passenger flows at airports.

In today’s environmentally conscious climate, replacing paper tickets with mobile ticketing will both reduce paper usage and alleviate the need to dispose of tickets with non-biodegradable inks or magnetic strips.

The agile business will require real-time access to content information from any location through Enterprise Content Management (ECM). This can ensure faster design review by engineers to meet strict deadlines, enhanced safety through ensuring controlled documents are read, and minimized downtime through ensuring correct versions of design documents are used when ordering spare parts.

The ability to take an educated view on future requirements is vital in a number of areas, including enabling operators to manage capacity, directing customers to spare capacity to ensure that people are on seats, whilst ensuring services are available for customers to travel where they want, when they want. BI is of great value here.

As our climate changes, asset maintenance schedules will need to be remodeled to take into account new extremes. Climate Change Modeling will be key in giving organizations the necessary foresight to prepare for change.

Anti-terror and anti-sabotage initiatives will require Identity and Access Management, which can be achieved through role management and information risk dashboards. Biometrics will play a key part in this. Wireless networks such as 3G and WiMAX will operate in parallel to bring data to remote workers. Technology selection at any location is likely to be based first on availability and value.

Integrating Geographic Information Systems with other tools such as BI or ECM will enable users to quickly find location-based knowledge, content, or intelligence.

Remote workers will use Wearable Computing devices to enable them to access information without the device impeding their work.

Social technologies can play their part in delivering information about services to users focused specifically to their needs. For example, social networks could present an individual with real-time information relating to their normal travel patterns or enable passengers on the same journey to find each other.

Other Web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis and blogs, could be used to make information available to all employees, particularly important when the workforce is becoming more virtual.