HAFAS User Conference 2020
Let’s talk MaaS! Hacon und eos.uptrade welcome the public transport community to Hanover
For the first time, Hacon und eos.uptrade teamed up to present trends and technologies related to Mobility as a Service at the annual HAFAS User Conference. More than 500 participants from 19 countries worldwide gathered at the Hannover Congress Centrum. The conference featured guest speakers François Bausch, Luxembourg’s vice-president, and Dr. Volkhardt Klöppner, CEO of the Hanover transit operator ÜSTRA.
It is considered a unique event in the public transport community: The HAFAS User Conference again united numerous international representatives of the transport industry on February 25 and 26. For the first time, Hacon and ticketing specialist eos.uptrade presented their Mobility as a Service (MaaS) portfolio jointly. The guests included participants from all over the world, including Europe, the US, and for the first time Brazil and India.
Stefan Weigele, co-founder of civity Management Consultants, opened the conference talking about the future of public mobility. His key take away was that public transport is and remains to be the backbone of urban mobility and that New Mobility needs to be well integrated with Public Transport in order to ensure an effective contribution.
Luxembourg’s vice-president François Bausch presented his government’s mobility strategy. In addition to offering free public transport, Luxembourg sets a European record in terms of its per capita investment in public transport. This includes the new MaaS platform mobiliteit.lu. Powered by HAFAS, it smartly combines all modes of transport. Hacon’s award-winning system connects public transport, bicycles, New Mobility, and even car traffic. This way, the platform paves the way to reduce traffic in Luxembourg.
In Hanover, new mobility concepts are also given the green light: Dr. Volkhardt Klöppner, CEO of the Hanover transport company ÜSTRA, presented how the state capital meets the challenges of sustainable city and regional traffic. Investments in infrastructure, cooperation with New Mobility and further digitalization were key aspects in ensuring that public transport continues to be the backbone of mobility. In 2020, ÜSTRA will simplify access to their services with a new region wide app, to be delivered by Hacon.
More and more public transport companies rely on intermodal mobility concepts complementing their offers with New Mobility options. The HAFAS algorithm enables Hacon customers from Switzerland, Denmark, Dubai as well as the San Francisco Bay Area to integrate smarter mobility chains by using several transportation modes in their applications. This way, they can provide useful itineraries for both cities and rural areas to assist with gapless mobility from door to door.
Smartphone-based ticketing solutions make intermodal journeys easier and more comfortable: eos.uptrade is implementing one of Germany’s first Check-in/Be-out (CiBo) ticketing solutions with best price guarantee. It will enable public transport passengers in the north-western town of Osnabrück to travel with the best price possible, even without detailed knowledge of fares and tariffs. Users of busses and trains will start their journey by simply checking in with a swipe on their smartphone. At the end of their trip, the system will check them out automatically and calculate the optimal price considering the route and duration of the journey.
Last but not least, the conference focused on business tools to assist with data management. Demonstrations showed that the creation and integration of quality information can empower public transport companies. With solutions for timetable and real-time data, disruption and fleet management, analytics and more, Hacon and Siemens Mobility presented technologies for the management of data from various sources used for trip planning. These tools can help ensure better communication between the transport companies and their customers.
