A proposal for a public transport ticketing solution based on customers' mobile devices

Abstract

The worldwide economic and financial crisis is trigger g a number of difficulties to several sectors, including public transport industry. Public Transport Operators (PTOs) have fewer resources to invest, nevertheless they need to achieve good results and improve their service offerings. Therefore, this paper aims to present an innovative ticketing solution based on customers' mobile devices, which intends to minimize the investment cost from the PTOs and customers' perspective, maximizing consumer's acceptance. The proposed solution doesn't require any interaction with PTOs infrastructures to purchase or validate a ticket, being solely based on customers' mobile devices with an internet connection. The approach presented in this paper is the result of a project involving the major PTO in Porto city and customers who contributed to the design, requirements elicitation and evaluation of the system. A prototype of the system has already been tested by a group of potential users. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.