Technical visions for Baltic Sea Region cross-border Interoperable ticketing systems Tanel Tammet, Märt Randoja, Kalle Aleksius

Goals Sell Tallinn tickets to Finland, Latvia etc: – Electronic public transport tickets in Tallinn – Tallinn tourist card – Event tickets Vice versa: Finnish tickets to Estonia, etc

Situation in Estonia and Finland ID ticket plus paper ticket in Estonia – But: no Estonian ID-s in Finland, Latvia – No ticket verification when entering the bus – Periodic random ticket checks in buses Rfid tickets plus paper tickets in Finland – But: no wide-spread RFID tickets in Estonia, Latvia – RFID tickets (contactless reading) of several kinds – Each bus has an RFID ticket reader – Ticket is always verified when entering the bus

City card in Estonia and Finland Different principles for the tourist city card – Somewhat different business concepts – Magnetic stripe card in Tallinn – Paper card in Turku – Paper Turku card will be replaced with RFID

Differences inside a country Old RFID system is currently phased out New system (e-Lippu) uses Ultralight and Desfire cards RFID system infrastructure in Turku is the same as in Tampere/Helsinki (e-Lippu) Yet, RFID tickets in Turku are not interoperable with RFID tickets in Helsinki

New e-Lippu cards in Finland Mifare Ultralight: – ca 0.4 EUR cost: used mainly for 10 ticket sheets – Card is normally neither reused nor reloaded – Has space for a single ticket only Mifare DesFire – Ca 1 EUR cost: a long-term reloadable card – May function as a value card or cash card – Has space for several different tickets

Data on RFID cards Unique, visible, openly readable ID number Encrypted ticket data pre-written on the card Encrypted ticket data written on the card when entering the bus

Information on RFID cards Unique ID of the card: openly readable – Printed visibly on e-Lippu cards – Can be used as an anonymous person code Stored ticket info: encrypted to avoid cheating – For example, 10-sheet ticket carries Basic information Information about how many tickets have been used – Initial data pre-written on card – Usage written on card when entering the bus

Interoperability with Finland Since – Finland is already introducing e-Lippu cards – Tallinn is planning to do so in the future – Estonian ID cards not usable in Finland It is feasible to – Not make changes into the Finnish system – Design interoperability into the Estonian RFID system

Three main options for Tallinn Simple and cheap, keeping paper tickets Medium complexity/cost: can avoid paper tickets Complex/expensive: use Finnish e-Lippu with a small modification

Simple option Simpler: keep the paper ticket for N-trip-sheets – Use the same Ultralight as in Finland – No data ever written on the card – Can be used also as a tourist card – Online validation only (plus validator caches) – No stationary RFID readers in buses – RFID readers attached to existing hand-validators – Use the RFID open ID like a person code – Ca 70K EUR investment, 30K EUR per year

Medium option Medium: possible to eliminate the paper ticket – Same Ultralight card – No data written on the card for period cards – Online for period cards, offline for N-times cards – Bus driver has an RFID reader as well, registering N-times-card usages and writing on the card – ID ticket, no-register RFID and register-RFID all function – 1M EUR invest, 0.5M cost, 0.4M savings per year

Complex option Use the e-Lippu ticket system almost as-is: – Offline validation – Use newer Mifare ultralight cards with more memory – Write Tallinn data in the high memory area not used in Finland – Thus both Tallinn and Finnish ticket can co-exist on the same RFID card

Our suggestion for city tourist card Use the RFID card number like the anonymous person code: – Online validation – Possible to use Tallinn bus RFID-s as identificators – Possible to use Finnish bus card as identificator – Possible to buy purely over web: no need to get a new physical card

In the simple/medium scenarios Finnish RFID ticket owners can buy a ticket over web: – Select ticket type, enter RFID ID nr, pay with a credit card – Then use the existing Finnish card in Tallinn – Holds only for the period card, not N-times card Nothing is ever written on the Finnish card

Buying Finnish tickets in Tallinn Assume we use Mifare ultralight or Desfire Consider period tickets with no information written on the card Such tickets can be freely overwritten with the Finnish ticket data Technically possible to do Finnish ticket sales in Tallinn, using existing Tallinn RFID tickets (no need to buy a new physical ticket)

Needed: international ticket portal We will have to create a new web site for ticket sales: – Buy Tallinn bus ticket and tourist card, attaching them to the RFID ID number of the card the person currently has – Pay with a credit card – Multilanguage, oriented to tourists – Possible to offer event tickets as well