Dublin Selects IBM for Citywide Smart Ticketing System

DUBLIN, IRELAND - The Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) has selected IBM (NYSE: IBM) to create and implement the infrastructure for an Integrated Ticketing System (ITS) across all public transport in the greater Dublin area. The e-payment system will enable commuters to use a single pre-paid smart card for travel on all buses, trains, trams and coaches in the city. The next generation automatic fare collection solution has the capacity to process up to 2 million transactions a day and can be extended to include other value added services such as Internet top-ups and micro-retail payments.

The new system is part of Ireland’s “Transport 21” project, the largest investment ever in the country’s transport system. Ireland plans to invest a total of 34 billion euro until the year 2015, to deliver world class transport to its citizens.

The ITS system eliminates the need to carry cash to pay for tickets, ensures fast, secure and convenient transactions and the smart card is simply “re-charged” as needed. It also makes for seamless travel and transfers across different operators and modes of transport and enables flexible fares and ticket products. The integrated IBM back-office system will provide ticket and smart card management, central reconciliation and settlement services to all public transport providers.

David O’Callaghan, Chairman of the Integrated Ticketing Project Board, which is tasked with overseeing the project, welcomed this significant development. “We are delighted to be able to link up with such a significant scheme as Singapore and to have a world leader like IBM overseeing the development,” said O’Callaghan.

The ITS Solution to be implemented in Dublin will use IBM’s proven technology platform running Integrated Ticketing application software from MSI Global from Singapore. In 2006, Singapore chose the IBM technology platform to support its customized smart card e-payment infrastructure and enable the long-term growth of the public transport ticketing system.

“With this project we are helping the Irish authorities to maximize the utilization of existing public transport assets across all modes of transport, while helping to ease the commute for consumers,” says Dermot Walsh, Partner, Global Business Services, IBM Ireland. “IBM’s intelligent transportation solutions are already helping many other cities and transport authorities worldwide to begin addressing the issues of keeping cities sustainable.”

In addition to working with the city of Dublin, IBM is also assisting the cities of London, Stockholm, Singapore and Brisbane, to meet traffic management and congestion challenges. IBM has established a global team of professionals working on a range of technologies and solutions, including researching, testing and developing new Intelligent Transport system management capabilities.

Work on the Dublin project begins immediately and a phased deployment of the live system will system will begin in late 2009.

About IBM
For more information about IBM, please visit http://www.ibm.com/services.

About RPA
For more information about RPA, please visit http://www.rpa.ie.