National Distribution System - based on OSDM-Online
Samtrafiken's National Distribution System, was launched on March 5 2024. It is the first system in Europe to embrace the open and international standard OSDM-Online. With this competition-neutral standard, all producers have the opportunity to connect and the system will be connected to several booking platforms.
This advancement brings significant benefits for travelers, simplifying access, planning, and booking for train journeys with various traffic operators, including competing companies, within Sweden and eventually throughout Europe.
With the help of this solution, all public transport providers will be able to make their ticket products accessible and combinable for retailers through the Samtrafiken DISTRIBUTION service. Both producers and retailers will have the ability to access the national product range through the Samtrafiken ACCESS service.
Distributed ecosystem based on the international and open standard OSDM-Online
Sweden is the first in Europe with a distributed ecosystem connected to multiple booking systems.
The system is built on the open and international standard OSDM-Online, developed by the International Union of Railways (UIC). With this competition-neutral standard as a foundation, all producers in both Sweden and Europe have the opportunity to connect. Consequently, the system will have multiple booking systems linked to it.
This provides significant benefits for travelers, making it easier to access, plan, and book train journeys with multiple transport operators, including competing companies, both in Sweden and to/from Europe.
Samtrafiken offers two services in Sweden, Samtrafiken DISTRIBUTION and Samtrafiken ACCESS.
The new infrastructure creates favorable conditions for the continued development of the ticket collaboration Resplus. The service will also enable more secure and widely validatable tickets when implemented. This, in turn, will contribute to increased safety and secured revenue.
The system is being developed in collaboration with Turnit, an Estonian company with experience in standards within the railway industry in Europe.
How will the new National Distribution System work?
Through the service Samtrafiken DISTRIBUTION, all of Samtrafiken's partners will have their ticket products distributed, making the entire collective transport offering in Sweden available to the retail sector. The service utilizes the OSDM-Online standard in its Application Programming Interface (API) to retrieve all ticket products. Retailers access the offering through the Samtrafiken ACCESS service, which also employs the "OSDM online" standard in its API to further distribute ticket products to various selling entities.
The new infrastructure is built on four essential components (refer to the accompanying illustration):
- A "data warehouse" where the majority of Samtrafiken's partners will store their ticket products. This is where the offerings of transportation companies are entered, and it is from here that the service retrieves the inventory.
- The sales tool Samtrafiken TRAID and a sales API. In TRAID, retailers can directly book journeys, suitable for those retailers with a need for manual sales management (such as kiosks, stores, or call centers) or as a complement to web sales. Retailers and producers wishing to sell through their own sales tools (such as websites or apps) can choose to access the inventory via API.
- Travel search for all saleable ground-based collective transport.
- A central service, a so-called distribution hub, which retrieves, combines, and distributes ticket products from both Samtrafiken's data warehouse and external data warehouses for partners with their booking systems.
Communication between these different components is based on the international and open OSDM-Online standard (Open Sales and Distribution Model).
Time plan
Implementation is planned to take place on April 3, 2024. Retailers can then book trips on the new platform with travel dates from 4th of June 2024 and beyond.
The project is currently undergoing an intensive testing phase to ensure both functionality and operational stability. Tests are being conducted with some of Samtrafiken's partners who have their booking systems to ensure that ticket sales and distribution linked to Resplus work seamlessly throughout the chain. The testing process also involves stakeholders from the retail sector.
In parallel with the testing, the establishment and alignment of new processes and procedures introduced by the new system are ongoing for both Samtrafiken and our owners and partners.
During the spring of 2024, Samtrafiken will provide relevant companies in the industry with more information and training regarding what is expected of them before the launch.
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