Dublin’s Railway Procurement Agency has chosen IBM to create and implement the infrastructure for a public transport ticketing system in the greater Dublin area. The payment system will enable commuters to use a single pre-paid contactless card similar to London’s Oyster, for travel on all buses, trains, trams and coaches in the city.
This next generation automatic fare collection solution has the capacity to process up to two million transactions a day and can be extended to include other value-added services such as reloading the card via the Internet and retail payments.
The new system, part of Ireland’s “Transport 21” project, is the largest investment ever in the country’s transport system. Ireland plans to invest a total of $50 billion until the year 2015, to deliver world class transport to its citizens.
The ITS system eliminates the need to carry cash to pay for tickets, and enabled fast, secure and convenient transactions. The smart card is simply “re-charged” as needed. The integrated IBM back-office system will provide ticket and smart card management, central reconciliation and settlement services to all public transport providers.
The ITS Solution to be implemented in Dublin will use IBM’s platform running Integrated Ticketing application software from MSI Global from Singapore. In 2006, Singapore chose the IBM technology platform to support its customized smart card e-payment infrastructure and enable the long-term growth of the public transport ticketing system.
In addition to working with the city of Dublin, IBM is also assisting the cities of London, Stockholm, Singapore and Brisbane, to meet traffic management and congestion challenges. IBM has established a team of professionals working on a range of technologies and solutions, including researching, testing and developing new Intelligent Transport system management capabilities.
Work on the Dublin project begins immediately and a phased deployment of the live system will will begin in late 2009. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/contactlessnews-4.gif)
