Karlsruhe, 26 February 2010

TOWARDS DOUBLING THE PUBLIC TRANSPORT MARKET SHARE BY 2025

The new market orientation towards “Individual Public Transport”, “Urban Navigation”, the Interoperable Fare Management (IFM) migration path to a generic European model of eTicketing and the Near Field Communication (NFC) are some of the major trends that emerged from the second edition of IT-TRANS. This three-day conference and exhibition organized by the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) and the Karlsruher-Messen und Kongresse GmbH (KMK) from 24 to 26 February 2010 in Karlsruhe, Germany showed how Information Technology supports the public transport sector’s strategy to double its market share by 2025.

IT will actually have a more crucial role to play in two main areas: provide lifestyle services by further developing travel information and e-ticketing, and change the public transport sector’s business culture by working with third parties like Google, banks and the credit card sector.

Reminding that public transport is the most serious instrument in fighting the urban environmental and financial crises, UITP President Alain Flausch stated at the IT-TRANS conference opening session: “I believe that Information Technology tools offer the most serious key to success to double public transport market shares worldwide by significantly transforming the sector. We have reached the final stages of the lifecycle of the invention called Public Transport. From today, further improvements need to be found in the arduous optimization of countless details. For this, IT tools are by far the most effective instruments of choice”.

“The success and the main difference with the first edition of IT-TRANS lies in the ever increasing belief of stakeholders, users and the market that IT tools are more and more part of people’s lifestyle. Applications of IT tools in public transport are no longer as visionary as many thought just two years ago and they are one of the strongest inputs to make public transport more customer-oriented” said UITP Secretary General Hans Rat to the press present.

More than 1,300 visitors and delegates from around 60 countries joined the event which has imposed itself as the major appointment for the public transport and the information technology sectors. IT-TRANS offered a high quality environment to share knowledge and discuss the newest trends of the market during 7 sessions, 7 workshops and 8 market updates.

The good results in terms of number of participants and the positive feedback on the conference programme from visitors, delegates and exhibitors at this edition of IT-TRANS encourage the two organisers UITP and KMK to move to the brand new and bigger Congress Centre in Karlsruhe for the next edition of the event in 2012, ,announced Britta Wirtz from KMK at the closing session.

http://www.uitp.org/news/pics/pdf/PR_IT%20Trans.pdf

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Notes to Editors

UITP (International Association of Public Transport) is the international network for public transport authorities and operators, policy decision-makers, scientific institutes and the public transport supply and service industry. It is a platform for worldwide cooperation, business development and the sharing of know-how between its 3,100 members from 90 countries. UITP is the global advocate for public transport and sustainable mobility, and the promoter of innovations in the sector. For more information, visit www.uitp.org. For more information on IT-TRANS please visit www.it-trans.de.

For more information about KMK please visit www.messe-karlsruhe.de.

Press contact: Sarah D’Angelo | UITP Press Junior Manager

Direct phone: +32 (0)2 6636639 | Fax: +32 (0)2 6601072 | sarah.dangelo@uitp.org