Nordic public transport experts met in Stenungsund

43 participants from Sweden, Norway and Denmark met to discuss how the industry can offer travel solutions that are smooth and efficient all the way regardless of transport mode, booking and payment. Passengers must be given the information they need before, during and after their journey.

Representatives from Microsoft projected the future and showed how new technology can make us more productive. They also discussed future development trends. Among other things, they see a transition from passive tools that require action from the user to intelligent tools that understand situations and predict and prioritise what is most important to us.

Ulf Bjersing from Hogia lectured on the need for standardised interfaces and the importance of working together to achieve a Nordic clarification of European standards, in order for these standards to become efficient tools to facilitate negotiation and integration of components.

Tomas Gabinus from ITxPT discussed the importance of developing a standard for the automotive industry to make it easier to give vehicles supplementary functions according to the operator's needs.

Henrik Nilsson from Hogia spoke about TransitCloud and what happens when real time means now. He argued that buses should be equipped with simpler hardware that only sends second-by-second position data from the vehicle, so that intelligence can be moved from the individual vehicles to a central system. This would reduce complexity and installation costs while making the whole system more flexible and allowing constant updates.

Nils Rasmussen from Movia discussed Movia's plans to give bus companies responsibility for almost all on-board equipment.

Jonny Albenius from Värmlandstrafik spoke about how they are equipping all their school buses with systems that report the vehicles' position in real time. They are planning a safer school transport service that can send real time information, including information about disruptions, to school traffic customers.

Martin Backman from Kalmar Länstrafik discussed his experience of integrating scheduled transport services with on-demand transport services. Kalmar Länstrafik is collaborating with X2AB on a project to demonstrate how an efficient integrated solution can be achieved by combining technical systems that perform separate tasks.