Ten years with InformNorden – IT cooperation in the Nordic countries

The breakthrough of the internet, the mobile phone and the GPS technology during the late 1990s made it possible for the public transport sector to develop new advanced information technology services. In order to coordinate this development in the Nordic countries, the public transport authorities in the four Nordic capitals – Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo and Helsinki – decided to start a joint project in 1998 called InformNorden.

The initiative came from the city of Gothenburg that already had developed and installed a new advanced citywide real-time passenger information system, the first in the world that also used Internet to show minute-by-minute count down arrivals of all buses and trams to all stops.

The InformNorden concept

The InformNorden concept was decided on during the first InformNorden conference in Copenhagen in 1999, with participation of representatives from public transport authorities, operators, suppliers, consultants and researchers in the Nordic countries. The ambition was to make InformNorden a market place where different parties could discuss new information technology tools to improve passenger information, ticketing and other ITS services. The goal was to have the transport authorities express mutual requirements on IT equipments and IT services and in this way make it easier for the suppliers to develop the right products. Another goal was to learn from each others experiences and save money by avoiding unnecessary mistakes.

It was soon quite obvious that this concept could also be of interest to the public transport sector all over the world. Therefore, via the InformNorden website, all interested parties in the Nordic countries as well as in other countries around the world were invited to exchange experiences in this development. By registering name, company and matters of interest anyone could use the InformNorden “open mail box” to ask questions and possibly receive valuable information about other organisations´ experiences of different IT systems.

Work groups with participation also from European countries outside Scandinavia were put together to discuss mutual requirements in areas like IT equipments in the bus drivers cockpit, data radio systems, mobile phones and other handheld devices and last but not least the need to exchange data between different IT applications in vehicles etc.

Rewarding individuals for excellent work within the field of IT in public transportation is also part of the InformNorden concept. Therefore, an InformNorden IT Award is given on an annual basis to a person living in one of the Nordic countries who have achieved remarkable results.

In order to reward students for valuable research results within the field of passenger information technology services, an annual InformNorden Scholarship of €1,000 is given to a student in one of the Nordic universities.

The InformNorden organisation

It was already quite clear from the beginning that if the InformNorden concept was to succeed, it must be backed up by the public transport authorities in the Nordic capitals Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen and Helsinki. To lead the InformNorden project, a steering committee was therefore selected with one representative from each capital. Later on, Reykjavik also joined the committee. A secretariat was constructed to serve the committee members and other persons interested in the InformNorden concept. The website www.informnorden.org was, from the beginning, administrated from Copenhagen. Today, Oslo has taken over this responsibility. Every year, the steering committee members alternate in the task to Chair InformNorden.

Ten years with InformNorden

Today, 10 years later, we can see that the InformNorden concept is still of value to people in our sector.

Ten annual InformNorden international IT conferences, attracting a gradually growing number of approximately 200 delegates with participation from many countries outside Scandinavia, have been arranged and appreciated by both delegates and exhibitors.

In an informal and relaxed atmosphere, the conferences provide overviews of developments and state-of-the-art systems in the Nordic countries with an input of experiences from countries all over the world.

The main target group is middle management people, i.e. people who are working on an every basis with information technology matters and appreciate meeting colleagues in other public transport organisations to exchange experiences.

On an international level, the InformNorden concept has been accepted in such a way that several members of the InformNorden steering committee are also members of the UITP commission on IT and Innovation. And InformNorden´s Norwegian committee member, Jarl Eliassen, is now chairing this commission.

InformNorden to focus on IT development in Denmark

The 11th InformNorden international IT conference will be held in Copenhagen from 9-11 September 2009, and the Danish public transport authority, Movia, is the local organiser. The new InformNorden Chairman is Mogens Buch-Larsen, Director of Administration at Movia. The IT cooperation within InformNorden will focus on the 2009 conference programme.

Distinguished themes on the conference will include ‘state-of-the-art’ systems for the use of real-time information via different channels, as well as new mobile phone services within public transportation. These types of services are developing rather quickly in the Nordic countries, and within the next few years, real-time information and the purchase of tickets “on the fly” will become natural to the passengers. At the Copenhagen conference, the latest advances within development of mobile phone services will be introduced by prominent persons from the telecom industry and the public transport sector.

State-of-the-art in Copenhagen

Mr. Buch-Larsen states that our sector will be faced by a new mobile phone era. The spreading of mobile phones opens up the possibility of reaching our public transport customers with information and other services. Public transport in a big city has many common features with the mobile phone – it is movable, gets around everywhere and you may use it at any moment and quite impulsively. Mentioned characteristics are used as guidelines for the services that Movia intend to place at their customer’s disposal on the mobile phone. Today, Movia offers services on the mobile phones in order to make it easier to be a public transport customer.

Real-time information

Especially in larger Danish cities with heavy traffic and a well developed public transport system, it is not only important to be able to plan travelling in advance but it is even more important to be able to be informed during the whole journey whether the planned connections are realistic or not, and it will be quite natural to use the mobile phone to do so.

In Copenhagen, the customers can use a travel planner accessible on the internet at www.rejseplanen.dk which is also available in English. The travel planner is also accessible in a mobile phone version at www.mobil.rejseplanen.dk.

Both travel planners will this year also allow access to real-time information together with a total overview of the journey from A to B. In Copenhagen real-time information is shown in all buses so that the customers can see when the next bus leaves from any bus stop in real-time.

With these services being available on the internet as well as on the mobile phone, it gives real alternatives to mounting expensive electronic real-time signs and/or count down displays in shelters or posts at bus stops and squares. By this we solve the most critical dilemma i.e. learning when the next bus will arrive – especially at stops with large intervals between the buses.

Very often, bus stops can have very few passengers and so is it acceptable to mount expensive electronic information? With the internet and mobile phone travel planner, passengers can serve themselves and learn when the next bus will arrive.

Due to intensive marketing, it has been recorded that the number of SMS messages has in one year grown to 20,000 weekly users and it is estimated to reach 30,000 in 2009. The same real-time service is offered for trains.

SMS tickets

At the beginning of 2009, SMS purchase of tickets – so-called ‘SMS-tickets’ – will be introduced in Copenhagen. This means that you can go travel by bus without cash in your pocket. It is expected that many passengers will use this service – a service that is already available to travellers in Stockholm where 20,000 SMS tickets are sold every day. In Helsinki, this service is available for travelling on the metro and trams where approximately 9,000 SMS-tickets are sold every day.