Press release:

Sweden is at the forefront of the liberalization of the mass transit market. The rail industry is fully liberalized with 10+ actors, and regional public transport, organised in 21 regions, has no formal monopolies. Samtrafiken has throughout the liberalization process, that has been ongoing for almost three decades, enabled combined travel through tickets called Resplus* in collaboration with all carrier parties.

When entering a new era where the mass transit offering, in light of the environmental crisis, needs to be even more digitalized and broadly available for different kinds of parties to offer their customers – the underlying infrastructure needs to be modern and based on standards. For decades, the rail industry has suffered from proprietary legacy systems and the public transport industry has had ticketing systems with insufficient interoperability. The new digital infrastructure in Sweden will be based on the OSDM** standard for rail booking and BoB*** standard for public transport ticketing.

After a thorough procurement process where Samtrafiken approached the market broadly, we established a technology partnership with Turnit. They are fully committed to standards and their views regarding future market needs are aligned with the views and needs of Samtrafiken. Today, Samtrafiken’s board of directors decided to sign a 5 to 8-year contract worth approximately EUR 2 million per year.

“We have been the forerunner in making the whole mass transit offering easily available for the travellers. We see a prosperous future with this technology partnership with Turnit. All the market leaders are board members of Samtrafiken and support this strategy”, says Göran Hägglund, Chairman of the Board of Samtrafiken.

“Samtrafiken´s and the Swedish approach to public transport is already today in many aspects number one in the world. When adding Turnit´s commitment to work with OSDM as a modern standard for the rail industry, an upgraded Resplus will be an eye opener for many other countries in Europe the coming years”, says Ülo Säre, CEO of Turnit.

“Quality of data and usage of standards are the keys to building an efficient digital infrastructure in a rapidly developing mobility market. In Turnit, we have found an agile technology partner that shares the same values as we do, and I see that the Resplus ticketing collaboration can be further developed in the years to come”, says Gerhard Wennerström, CEO of Samtrafiken.

The implementation phase of the new digital infrastructure will start now and go live in its first release during the third quarter 2023.

For more information, please contact:

Gerhard Wennerström, Samtrafiken, gerhard.wennerstrom@samtrafiken.se, +46 707623876

Ülo Säre, Turnit, ulo.sare@turnit.com, +372 501 8160

Explanations:

^* Resplus = Ticketing collaboration in Sweden since 1991. Combines rail, coaches, buses, ferries, trams and metro in one ticket. (https://samtrafiken.se/tjanster/resplus/)

^**OSDM = Open Sales and Distribution Model. The aims are to substantially simplify and improve the booking process for customers of public transport trips and to lower complexity and distribution costs for distributors and carriers. (https://unioninternationalcheminsdefer.github.io/OSDM/)

^***BoB - National Ticket & Payment Standards for Public Transport. The objective for the standard is to create possibilities for interoperability, not only in-between different ticketing systems but also between different components within a ticket system. (https://bob.samtrafiken.se)

Turnit is a leading travel tech company providing mission-critical distribution and reservation software technology and consultancy to the passenger transport industry. Turnit Ride platform, delivered as a fully managed SaaS, processes tens of millions of seat reservations annually and its services are used by over 40 transport operators across the world in Europe, North America, and Africa, including global mobility and public transport leaders such as Samtrafiken, Vy Group, Bus Éireann, CTM, and LTG Link. www.turnit.com.