Hitachi Rail’s ‘360Pass’ mobility app to transform travel in Trentino

• Hitachi Rail’s new 360Pass smartphone app goes live in Trentino, Italy, today allowing passengers to use a QR code in an app to pay for all travel on trains and buses, and parking lots in the area.
• Technology benefits local operators and city planners by capturing passengers’ multi-modal data and enabling the creation of a ‘digital twin’ of the region’s transport network.
• The app uses Hitachi’s Lumada Intelligent Mobility Management suite, which includes an enabling tech for the analysis of combined data from different technologies such as smart ticketing and passenger flow management creating value for passengers and transport operators alike.

Hitachi Rail has today unveiled its new 360Pass travel app and platform in Trentino, underlining its commitment to growing its smart mobility business. Downloadable free of charge from any app store, citizens and tourists will benefit from being able to plan and travel on all public transport in Trentino without having to purchase a traditional ticket. The app supports wider multi-modal journeys, with users able to pay for ‘blue stripe’ parking lots across the city.

The 360Pass app allows Trentino users to buy and validate their ticket for any mode of public transport through the smartphone app. Tickets can be validated either by scanning the QR code on bus services, or automatically via the apps Bluetooth setting, which interacts with sensors installed in 38 stations on the Trento-Malè-Mezzana rail line and on board the trains. The sensors detect the origin and destination of each journey and automatically validate tickets, enabling passengers to travel ‘hands-free’.

360Pass gives passengers the fastest and most convenient real-time multi-modal route options for their journey. Passengers are able to monitor crowding-levels on incoming services, enabling the option to choose less busy journeys. This function can help to allay customer fears in the context of Covid-19, and encourage nervous travellers back on to public transport.

Trento, like many cities around the world, faces the ever more important challenges of reducing congestion, emissions and delivering quality services. As a result, the city’s administration is working to enhance public transport and improve the passenger experience, helping to boost the use of sustainable mass transport across the city.

Trentino’s 360Pass smartphone app is brought to market following the recent successful launch of Hitachi Rail’s new smart mobility suite called Lumada Intelligent Mobility Management. This technology, launched in July on the back of the successful 360Pass trial in Genoa, Italy, can be quickly deployed in cities all around the world.

In addition to the 360Pass smartphone app for passengers, the Lumada Intelligent Mobility Management suite gives operators the ability to connect, scale and optimize their city’s entire transportation network in real time.

By creating a ‘digital twin’ of the region’s end-to-end multimodal journeys, operators can optimize the services and the timetable, and create a system that better accommodates the changing peaks and troughs in passenger demand. It can also identify the issues that deter public transport usage, such as congestion, emissions, crowding or gaps in services.

In addition to smart ticketing, the suite also includes solutions to help operators control traffic flow and service patterns in real time.

Domenico Lanciotto, General Manager Italy & Central, Eastern & Southern Europe – LoB Rail Control, said: ‘The “360Pass” app demonstrates our commitment to harnessing smart mobility technology to transform public transport for passengers. Powered by Hitachi’s Lumada Intelligent Mobility Management suite, municipalities and operators around the world will have the tools to optimize and create a more seamless transport network, encouraging a step-change in the use of sustainable public transport.’

ENDS

Note to the editors

About Hitachi’s Lumada Intelligent Mobility Management suite

Lumada Intelligent Mobility Management is Hitachi’s new suite of smart mobility solutions for cities, transport operators and passengers.

The suite represents Hitachi Rail’s 360º vision for smarter mobility, incorporating solutions across three key areas:

- smart ticketing (including 360Pass)

- flow management for people and vehicles

- electrified mobility solutions

Using the suite’s 360Motion platform, a real time analytics tool that creates a digital twin of a city’s entire transportation network, operators can connect, scale and optimize any combination of these services. As a flexible platform, 360Motion can integrate technology from any existing provider, or draw from the range of solutions within the wider Hitachi group.

By offering ‘as a service’ business models to customers, Hitachi Rail aims to make it easier than ever for cities, operators and passengers to accelerate the transformation to more sustainable transportation.

More information can be found on the website, here.

About 360Pass: “hands-free” Smart Ticketing technology

Part of Lumada Intelligent Mobility Management’s smart ticketing offering, Hitachi Rail is also launching the new 360Pass mobile application for passengers, available on iOS and Android smart phones. The app, already available in Genoa, will be rolled out on a city-by-city basis in partnership with local transportation authorities and operators.

In addition to conventional mobile ticketing capabilities, such as e-ticketing and QR codes, 360Pass offers innovative hands-free “Be In Be Out” technology that provides ticketless transportation across multiple modes of transport.

The technology uses a network of sensor nodes, installed at strategic points across a transport network, including on trains, buses, parking lots at stops and stations, which connect with the user’s 360Pass app via Bluetooth.

Once a passenger begins a journey, the app connects with each sensor it passes on the route, recording the full multi-modal journey, for example capturing how a passenger moves between a bus and a metro service. In cities like Genoa the app then uses the recorded data to calculate the best-priced fair for the passenger at the end of the day, and sends a receipt for the final fair at 3am the next day.

The app also provides more personalized information to the passenger, based on the context of their journey – predicting crowding at future stops and alerting passengers as they approach their destination.

Aside from providing a seamless experience for the passenger, the technology can deliver significant benefits for operators, including enhanced data on passengers’ full multi-modal journeys, supporting the optimization of timetables. The technology also has the potential to remove large queues and bottlenecks around ticket barriers by using the technology at the entrance to platforms or vehicles.

Hitachi Rail’s new launch programs, and decades of experience conventional ticketing, are proving the viability of technology that connects multiple modes of transport across an entire city or region.