It's a game worth 1 million euros, perhaps more, which Atac could collect in advance. A precious liquidity to give relief to the coffers of the municipal transport company. The game we are talking about concerns the payment of the ticket on the bus, tram and metro via mobile phone. A similar solution, but more complex since it involves the use of credit cards, was announced just recently by the Bergamo transport company (Atb), following an agreement with Credito Bergamasco. In Rome, on the other hand, the system, which has been under discussion for some months but without significant progress, is technically simple and has already been adopted in 15 Italian cities, with Florence leading the way in March 2012. It consists in downloading the cost of the ticket on the passenger's telephone credit. When getting on public transport, just send a text message to a predefined short number and wait for an immediate response. Then you can get on board without fear of being considered abusive: in case of checks, just let the staff read the message and everything is fine.
Bus and subwayAtac is already doing something similar with myCicero which allows you to pay for parking via mobile phone (7000 subscribers in a month and a half). But already before last summer, according to confidential information, the telephone operators (Telecom, Vodafone, Wind and 3) started talks with the Municipality and Atac, to launch the project. The proposal on the administrators' table envisages the advance purchase of 1 million tickets by the big telecommunications operators who will recover the cost by subsequently charging the ticket price to the customer.
The route includes two stages: a pilot project aimed at residents and also extended to some major events (such as the canonization of the two Popes in April), starting from surface vehicles (945 million passengers transported by Atac in 2012) with a price reduced compared to the 1,5 euro integrated ticket which today also covers passage on the metro (279 million passengers) or local rail (42 million); a subsequent expansion to the entire network, with a full ticket, once the software has been adapted to the turnstiles (starting from 1-2 per stop).
The platform is ready and in the other cities where it is used, including Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Bari, 3 million e-tickets have been sold and negotiations concluded within 3-6 months. Not only that, the same operators would also bear the cost of the advertising campaign for public information. In return, they would collect a commission on the service offered but their interest is above all to move traffic by earning, so to speak, on the text messages sent by passengers, which everyone would pay according to their telephone plan. The advantages for the administration seem manifold: obtaining liquidity, combating counterfeiting and, by facilitating the purchase of tickets together with the increase in controls, helping to reduce the scourge of unauthorized persons: in Rome, according to the latest available data, about one passenger out of five they don't pay.
Great slowness. If this is the path, then what is holding it back? Atac, it seems, would prefer to start immediately with a single bus-metro-railway e-ticket on the model of the current integrated paper ticket, involving Cotral and Fs right from the start. It is here that times get longer and the occasion of the big spring events to launch the service has been lost. «Technological innovation is very important to us – Danilo Broggi, CEO of Atac affirms however – but the path to Rome is very complex because we also manage the subways where there are turnstiles. We are working and we are on point. We hope to complete the construction of the route by the end of the summer which will allow us to present the new product to our customers by the end of the autumn».
