On 12. May, the European Passengers’ Federation (EPF) and the Smart Ticketing Alliance (STA) co-hosted a stakeholder event in Brussels, as part of the STA’s National Digital Ticketing Stakeholder Dialogue. The aim: to foster stronger collaboration between technical experts and passenger advocates.

Building on a first joint workshop held in February, discussions underscored the shared commitment to making digital ticketing work for all. A central question throughout the event: How can we better align technical innovation with the real-world needs of passengers? Key topics included Account-Based Ticketing and Multimodal Digital Mobility Services. The dialogue revealed both common ground and open questions – providing a solid foundation for ongoing cooperation:

• While improving the ticketing experience, passengers’ privacy is a key priority to address.
• The role of open standards and APIs was also a focal point, recognised as essential for building user-friendly, interoperable ticketing systems.
• We need to ensure inclusion & user-friendliness of digital ticketing platforms, across age groups and digital literacy levels.

Another topic on the agenda was the SIGN-AIR project, which is working on developing a one-stop-shop platform that streamlines multimodal collaboration among transport service providers. Within SIGN-AIR, EPF and STA are working together towards creating common terminologies and standards.

• As highlighted during the meeting by Jaap De Bie, Technical Coordinator of the STA’s Executive Board, the creation of a multimodal glossary is important in order to “speak the same language”: using the same terms and definitions leads to mutual understanding and trust. Furthermore, standardisation and harmonisation of standards are crucial for interoperability, and support compliance with European regulation.
• EPF is assisting these efforts, led by STA, bearing in mind that ultimately, the objective of the SIGN-AIR project – and the reason why EPF is involved in it – is to allow TSPs to collaborate in a simple and efficient way, so that passengers can have a seamless door2door journey, hereby focusing on three main goals: mobility packages (ticketing) – synchronisation of timetables (better connections) and disruption management.

➡️ Find out more about SIGN-AIR here.