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THIS PROJECT IS IMPLEMENTED THROUGH THE CENTRAL EUROPE PROGRAMME CO-FINANCED BY THE ERDF WEBSITE: WWW.EDITS-PROJECT.EU - WWW.CENTRAL2013.EU

Version: v1.0 Dissemination level: Public WP: WP6 – Assessment and Strategy Author: LP / ATE, PP11/KOR Status: Final

O6.2.9 – Final EDITS Business Plan


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CE Project Number:

4CE433P2

Acronym:

EDITS

Title:

European Digital Traffic Infrastructure Network for Intelligent Transport Systems

Month of availability according to Application Form:

M29

Actual date of delivery:

M30

Main author(s) or editor(s):

LP/ATE: Katharina Zwick, David König

Other author(s):

PP11/KORDIS: Kvetoslav Havlik

Version History:

Version Date Main author(s) Summary of changes

0.1 2014/11/28 LP First draft based on the 6.2.8, Elaboration of chapters 1 and 2

0.2 2014/12/11 LP Further elaboration of the content based on the SCOM decision , Elaboration of chapter 3

0.3 2014/12/15 LP Elaboration of chapter 4 and 5

1.0 2014/12/22 LP Final draft version for feedback for partners


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List of the EDITS Project Partners: Partner

no. Partner

short name Partner name Country

LP ATE AustriaTech - Federal Agency for technological Measures Ltd. AT

PP2 CEI Central European Initiative - Executive Secretariat IT

PP3 FVG Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia Central Directorate for infrastructure, mobility, spatial planning and public works

IT

PP4 MOD Province of Modena IT

PP5 FER Province of Ferrara - Technical Infrastructure, Buildings, Civil protection, Tenders

IT

PP6 VOR Public Transport association of the Eastern region of Austria / ITS Vienna Region

AT

PP7 BRA City of Bratislava SK

PP8 KKK Hungarian Transport Administration HU

PP9 TEL TELEMATIX SOFTWARE a.s. CZ

PP10 BKO Brněnské komunikace a.s. CZ

PP11 KOR KORDIS JMK, a.s. CZ

PP12 ASF ASFINAG Maut Service GmbH AT

PP13 GYS Győr-Sopron-Ebenfurt Railway Corp. / Ltd HU


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Table of Contents

1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 5

2. The EDITS Value Chain ........................................................................................................ 7

2.1 Definition of value chain and relation to organisational service chain ..................... 7

2.2 Actors and their Roles EDITS Value chain .................................................................. 8

2.3 Analysis of the EDITS Value Chain in practice ........................................................... 8

2.4 Conclusions from the analysis of the EDITS Value Chain in practice .................... 11

3. The EDITS Business Models in the different regions ...................................................... 13

3.1 Introduction to the EDITS “business model” ............................................................ 13

3.2 Purpose and (business) strategy behind EDITS ....................................................... 14

3.3 EDITS target Groups and their benefits ..................................................................... 16

4. The EDITS Rollout-Plan in the regions ............................................................................. 24

5. The EDITS Big Picture – Outlook and Recommendations .............................................. 26

5.1 EDITS in the policy context......................................................................................... 26

5.2 EDITS Big Picture – Further steps of EDITS in the long-term perspective ............. 28


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1. Introduction The Final EDITS business plan will be comprised of O.6.2.5, O6.2.6 as well as O6.2.7 and com-pleted with the results of the user assessment and the results of the workshops that have been taken place between September and November 2014. Based on these results the recommendations will be derived. As this is a draft document the main content is listed in form of bullet point lists.

Figure 1: Overview of Action 6.2

The EDITS business plan aims to answer three main questions:

• Who deploys EDITS?

This question will deal with the setup and the basic concept behind EDITS and the need for a certain partner structure.

• What are the business models behind EDITS? What is the added value out of the EDITS system?

Within the EDITS business plan a more detailed analysis on the different target groups of EDITS will be done, depicting their specific needs and benefits of using EDITS services.


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The project EDITS, based on the general concept and setup includes elements that are rel-evant for b2c level and other elements that are highly relevant on a b2b level. Furthermore the term “business model” in relation to EDITS will be defined, as no “classical” business model fit the EDITS framework conditions.

This document will focus on the main roll-out, dissemination and marketing strategy, provid-ing a basic strategic document for the further development and deployment. The presenta-tion of estimated “operating costs” is not part of this document. Because of the basic con-cept of EDITS (exchange of data to enhance already existing services) no general or aver-age “cost model” exists or can be adjusted in a proper way for all different types of end-user or b2b services for all countries. Therefor this document will focus on the basic and strategic plans of EDITS.

• How can EDITS be rolled-out (beyond the consortium and project scope)?

The last part of the business plan will deal with the short term roll-out plans in the regions, as well as with the EDITS “Big picture” and will depict how EDITS will develop in the short- and mid-term, but will also analyse where it could go in the long-term perspective.

So the EDITS business plan will consists of the following chapters:

• Introduction

• The EDITS Value Chain (corresponds to 6.2.5)

o Definition of value chain and relation to organisational service chain

o Analysis of the EDITS Value Chain in practice

• The EDITS Business Models in the different regions (corresponds to 6.2.6)

o General Introduction about the EDITS business model, not a classical busi-ness model where money is being made

o Business-Model – Target Groups and their benefits

• The EDITS Rollout-Plan in the regions (corresponds to 6.2.7)

• The EDITS Big Picture – Outlook and Recommendations (corresponds to 6.3.1)


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2. The EDITS Value Chain

2.1 Definition of value chain and relation to organisational service chain In order to analyse the EDITS projects from a business plan/business model point of view it is very important to be aware of the value chain that lies behind the provision of multimodal traveller information services. This value chain is closely connected to the EDITS organisational service chain described and defined within the EDITS output O3.3.2 (EDITS Organisational Framework). While within Output 3.3.2 all important roles which are needed for data and information exchange within the EDITS project have been collected and described from a purely organisational point of view this document focuses on the description of the concrete roles and actors as they have been identified within the EDITS project. This allows for an analysis of the goals and targets of the involved partners and leads to conclusions on how sustainable end-user services can be rolled-out in Europe. An important factor is to understand the different roles and what added val-ue they bring to the actual service provision in order to conclude on how the actors can work to-gether. Therefore similar to the organisational service chain the EDITS value chain consists of the very same main actors and roles which are needed for the provision of a multimodal traveller information end-user service, as can be seen in Figure .

Actors

Roles of the actors

Data collection

Data pro-cessing /

generation of infor-mation

Data provision /

Formatting / Exporting

Service genera-

tion

Service provision

Service / application (e.g. web-

based)

Figure 2: The EDITS Value Chain The depicted EDITS Value Chain is valid for all modules defined with the EDITS Multimodal Traveller Information (MTI) Service. It’s very important to be aware that all of the depicted roles have to be fulfilled by an organisation or entity in order to provide a functioning and high quality service to the end-user. Of course this does not mean that each step needs to be done by the same organisations, on the contrary within EDITS the roles are distributed to different stakehold-ers.

Content Provider

Editorial Operator

Service Provider

HMI


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2.2 Actors and their Roles EDITS Value chain As already defined in Output 3.3.2 the main actors in the provision of traveller information ser-vices are

• Content Provider, responsible for collection and distribution of raw data (e.g. road admin-istrations, traffic management centres, public transport organisations using their road sensing technologies to gather traffic data)

• Editorial Operator, receiving the data from the content provider and adding additional in-formation to generate added-value data (e.g. the transformation of FCD-based vehicle speeds into resulting LOS (Level-of-Service)). Furthermore the encoding of transport in-formation based on defined specifications and standards (e.g. DATEX II) is done within this phase.

• Service Provider, responsible for the generation of the actual traveller information service that includes all user requested traffic and transport information. In this phase the routing is done. Furthermore the correct transmission and provision of services via different media to the end-users is part of the responsibility of the service provider.

These main roles have to be fulfilled when setting up the EDITS services in the different regions and is therefore relevant for elaborating the EDITS business plan. In order to operate and deploy EDITS these roles have to be fulfilled by bodies from the different countries that are participating – these can be different organisations. Based on the organisational framework and conditions in the different regions the partner structure can look very heterogeneous. In the following chapters some examples from the different EDITS regions will provide an over-view how the partner structure can look based on these pre-defined role definitions.

2.3 Analysis of the EDITS Value Chain in practice Looking on the demonstration area Austria-Italy-Slovenia and the EDITS Service provision there the following picture will be revealed:


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Partner Module Responsibility within the Organisational Service Chain HMI

Data Collection

Data processing

Data provision

Service generation

Service provision HMI

FVG 1.1 FVG / Others Responsibility

FVG / Others Responsibility

FVG / Others Responsibility

FVG FVG Web

FVG 1.2 FVG FVG FVG FVG FVG Web

CEI 1.1 CEI CEI -

AUTOVIE 1.2 AUTOVIE AUTOVIE -

ASFINAG 1.2 ASFINAG ASFINAG ASFINAG ASFINAG,

VOR ASFINAG,

VOR Web


VOR ASFINAG,

VOR Web


VOR ASFINAG,

VOR Web

Figure 3: Overview of the specified Organisational Service Chain in the AT-IT-SI demonstration site

The region of Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, as well as the two motorway operators Autovie Venete and ASFINAG act as both content providers, as well as editorial operators. Fulfilling their role FVG collects static road data, weather alerts and the Level of Services data for the Italian part of the demonstration area. Furthermore they are responsible for the management of the information in-side the GIS System. ASFINAG and Autovie Venete collect the data from their own highway net-work like webcam Information, Weather Warnings, as well as for the processing of level of ser-vice information on road closures and traffic jams / long queues. As the two EDITS partners ASFINAG and FVG (together with the partner CEI) are implementing the EDITS services based on their existing service they also fulfil the role of the service provider in this case. In this example both partners are fulfilling all roles in the EDITS service provision chain. In this case both actors are public bodies, collecting, editing and providing their own within their own service. A similar structure can be identified for the demonstration area Italy:

Partner Module

Responsibility within the Organisational Service Chain HMI

Data Collection

Data processing

Data provision

Service generatio

n

Service provision HMI

MODENA 1.1

MODENA / Others

Responsibility

MODENA / Others

Responsibility

MODENA / Others

Responsibility

MODENA MODENA Web

MODENA 2.1 MODENA MODENA MODENA MODENA MODENA Web

FERRARA 1.1 FERRARA FERRARA FERRARA FERRARA FERRARA Web

Figure 4: Overview of the specified Organisational Service Chain in the ITALY demonstration site


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Also in this case the two EDITS partners are public organisations, fulfilling all roles in the service chain, being responsible for the collection, editing of the data, as well as for the final provision of the service. The analysis of the implementation within the demonstration area CENTROPE shows a picture that is a little bit different as more players and actors are involved here. The analysis of the other two demonstration areas has shown that in general, if the involved part-ners that are “public”, they often act in all three roles of the service chain – they are not only col-lecting, but also providing the services directly to the end-users via the existing services, fulfilling their tasks as public organisation. The private partner involved in the demonstration area CENTROPE (Telematix) therefore fulfils the role of the editorial and service provider, based on the data of the public organisations BKOM and KORDIS.


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Partner Module

Responsibility within the Organisational Service Chain HMI

Data Collectio

n

Data processin

g

Data provisio

n

Service generatio

n

Service provisio

n HMI

VOR 1.1 VOR VOR VOR VOR VOR Web VOR 1.5 VOR VOR VOR VOR VOR Web VOR 1.6 VOR VOR VOR VOR VOR Web VOR 2.1 VOR VOR VOR VOR VOR Web KKK 1.1 KKK KKK KKK KKK KKK Web KKK 1.3 KKK KKK KKK KKK KKK Web KKK 1.6 KKK KKK KKK KKK KKK Web

KKK 2.1 GYSEV/KTI

GYSEV/KTI KKK KKK KKK Web

KKK 3.1 GYSEV/KTI

GYSEV/KTI KKK KKK KKK Web

GYSEV 2.1 GYSEV GYSEV GYSEV KKK GYSEV Web GYSEV 2.2 GYSEV GYSEV GYSEV GYSEV GYSEV Web

KORDIS 2.1 KORDIS KORDIS KORDIS KORDIS KORDIS/ CHAPS

Web

KORDIS 2.2 KORDIS KORDIS KORDIS BKOM TMX Web

TMX 1.1 BKOM TMX TMX TMX TMX Mobile App



TMX 2.1 KORDIS TMX TMX TMX TMX Mobile App

TMX 3.1 KORDIS TMX TMX TMX TMX Mobile App

BKOM 1.2 BKOM BKOM BKOM BKOM BKOM Web

Figure 5: Overview of the specified Organisational Service Chain in the CENTROPE demonstration site

2.4 Conclusions from the analysis of the EDITS Value Chain in practice The main question to be answered here is: How do the EDITS value chain models look in prac-

tice and what does this mean for the further deployment of EDITS?

Looking at the examples in chapter 2.3 it can be stated that the EDITS organisational/value chain model is relatively basic and can be adapted very flexible to the needs of the different partner regions. As mentioned before the different roles can be fulfilled by different kind of organisa-tions. So based on the basic concept behind EDITS different constellations of private and pub-lic organisations are able to work together to provide services.


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But when analysing the EDITS approach in terms of organisational partnerships the first results have shown that basically the public hand needs to be on board – single roles can be fulfilled by private companies, but EDITS is driven by public authorities (minimum case PPP – Public Private Partnership).

For the future deployment of EDITS it is important to consider the role and tasks of public bodies or organisations fulfilling their tasks connected to cities and regions.


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3. The EDITS Business Models in the different regions

3.1 Introduction to the EDITS “business model” The general definition of business model is often linked to turnover and profit. In this sense the EDITS business model will not be a “classical business model”, but furthermore kind of “operating model”. In general the business model describes how “the rationale of how an organization cre-ates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural or other contexts”1 .This can also be depicted for EDITS, although the provision of traveller information services as provided by ED-ITS will not include the commercialisation of products (in most cases). Nevertheless the following chapters will link the main aspects of EDITS with the core parts of a business model:

• Purpose and (business) strategy • (Business) process • Target customers / Target groups • Offerings • Infrastructure • Organizational structure (already covered by O2.6.5) • Trading practices (in this sense the organisational view on the data exchange model) • Operational processes (already covered by O2.6.5) • Strategies and Policies (already covered by O2.6.7)

Furthermore the basic concept of EDITS has to be considered when describing the “EDITS busi-ness model”. Within the EDITS project different business cases are integrated considering the EDITS service provision within the different demonstration sites. Comparing the EDITS MTI service provision with other products’ selling strategies one can see that different approaches of collaborations be-tween public and private institutions have been established in order to provide seamless traveller information to end-users. Considering the financial aspects of providing the EDITS service, al-ready existing as well as new-established traveller information systems present the basis for set-ting up cross-border traffic and transport information within the EDITS partner regions. Under these circumstances currently existing ICT-infrastructures are able to be reutilised and updated in order to come up with further cross-border requirements specified within EDITS. Furthermore the term “product” has to be defined here. When talking about products within the context of EDITS the answer can be twofold. On the one hand, regarding the main tasks and ac- 1 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_model

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_model


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tivities within EDITS public services or furthermore tasks that need to be fulfilled by the public hand will be considered as “products”. In this case EDITS will enable fulfilling the tasks in a more efficient, innovative way. On the other hand the developed EDITS end-user services are the “products” to be considered. One should keep this in mind when talking about the EDITS busi-ness model. As we have seen that EDITS is always targeting the public hand to fulfil their tasks in the provi-sion of the EDITS Service. So the main purpose is to deliver high-quality services for their cus-tomers, fulfilling the official task better. EDITS is not “selling” any services. Commercialisation of the products is not the (main) purpose, which has main impact on the development of a business model. As the basic concept of EDITS is based on the principle to improve, update and harmonize exist-ing services in the partner regions to finally ensure the provision of seamless cross-border ser-vices to the single traveller than setting up a new central multimodal journey planner within the involved EU Member States. Therefore existing structures are used and only existing services will be enhanced. This means further that these existing services already have an operative busi-ness model – so there is no need to create new business models, but instead adapt the existing ones. Last but not least it is important to have in mind that the targeted public authorities as well as pri-vate companies have already existing business model that are not directly interacting with ED-ITS. Because of the basic concept of EDITS (exchange of data to enhance already existing services) no general or average “cost model” exists or can be adjusted in a proper way for all different types of end-user or b2b services for all countries (especially considering the role of the public hand and the non-typical business concepts existing). Therefor this document will focus on the basic and strategic plans of EDITS, as well as the deployment/dissemination/marketing strategy behind EDITS.

3.2 Purpose and (business) strategy behind EDITS This chapter will describe the main purpose and strategy of the EDITS project in connection to the EDITS business model. Furthermore it will describe on the level of the regions the general purpose and strategy to be part of the EDITS project: The provision of interoperable and multimodal traveller information services is seen as major con-tribution to ensure mobility in and between cities and regions, besides they address the challeng-es of modal split, increasing congestion and greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sec-


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tor. Based on these presumptions various European cities, regions and transport operators have started to provide journey planners for public transport as well as motorized individual transport in order to serve their citizens and travellers. An important basis for multimodal traveller information services are the underlying digital maps and graphs from the different transport modes (passen-ger car traffic, public transport, cycling, walking) to enable multimodal routing and interchange in-formation. Based on these facts the project EDITS developed an approach to foster interoperable, cross-border multimodal traveller information systems, in a sustainable way by tackling the issues stat-ed above. The vision of the EDITS project is to enhance the personal mobility of Central European citizens by providing interoperable and multimodal traveller information services based on a harmonised platform for Data and Information exchange. This can be achieved by the set up or improvement of existing traveller information services as well as by the improvement of traffic management solutions resulting in traveller information services. Having in mind this basic mission of EDITS the different partners have various reasons for being part of EDITS. The partners have presented their motivation for becoming part of the EDITS pro-ject in the first meeting taking place in Vienna in October 2012. Summarizing these expectations the partners had to following reasons to take part in this project:

• Added-value to existing systems: Most of the partners decided to take part in the EDITS project in order to enhance their existing service and provide traveller information across the borders as value-added service to their customers. Some partners also expected to elaborate versions of services of neighbouring countries in their own language. But most of the partners expected to bring value added to their own systems, instead of creating a new service.

• More cooperation in and between EDITS countries: Most of the partners expected more cooperation and also data-exchange within their own country – enabled or fostered by ED-ITS.

• Multimodality: Furthermore some of the partners planned to enhance their existing ser-vices in terms of multimodality or intermodality.

• Multilingualism: Some partners also expected to have multilingual versions of their ser-vices.

Furthermore some partners had some concrete, specific reasons for joining the EDITS consorti-um: KKK as a bridge organization between government, authorities, public transport and network management companies, which expect to support the data sharing and exchange in transport


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sector in Hungary as a whole. EDITS would enable them in that perspective to extend their sys-tem’s capabilities and services. GYSEV as the only rail company in the EDITS project was very focused on their improved ser-vice for their passengers: GYSEV’s goal is to be a modern, passenger friendly rail company. To achieve this a constant development is indispensable, therefore it’s important for the company to implement the latest technologies. Through EDITS project they have planned to improve their passenger information system, which helps to provide better services to their clients. Some partners, like the city of Bratislava, planned to set up the basis for end-user services as they are missing the very basis in their cities (e.g. actual road network connected with a geopor-tal, timeables on regional level, etc) or even create new end-user services, e.g. mobile applica-tions. The Provinces of Ferrara and Modena have been in possession of geo-databases which are not, like it is often the case, not related between the different regions at local level and at “area” level. Main motivation to take part in the EDITS project was their willingness implement a single open platform at area-level that allows to collect all the geo-databases (with defined common rules), with the possibility to construct correlations between them, to share them among all the partici-pants – for the present and the future - and make the data accessible to the citizens according to the different needs. Last, but not least the networking and cooperation both at the institutional and project level has been a motivational factor for the EDITS partners.

So concluding this it has to be stated that the goal of EDITS – to enhance the personal mobility in Central Europe - is also reflected in the organisational motivation of the differ-ent partners when becoming part of the EDITS project. This depicts not only the main rea-sons for implementing the EDITS approach (for future activities), but also shows the main benefits of the EDITS approach for the different stakeholders.

3.3 EDITS target Groups and their benefits As mentioned before EDITS has on the one hand one b2c level, when talking about the EDITS services provided, a b2b level, when it comes to the improvements for fulfilling the tasks of the public or private organisations e.g. data exchange for improvements of cross-border traffic man-agement. On a very general level we can state it can be distinguished between the target groups for the EDITS (MTI) Service and the target groups for the EDITS System itself.


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The results depicted in the following derive on the one hand from the analysis of the user needs in WP3 (O3.2.1), as well as from the results from the task 6.1 User assessment within WP6. As described also in the outputs O6.1.1. and O6.1.2 an user web-questionnaire, a stakeholder-questionnaire as well as different workshops regarding the assessment of the users and stake-holders have been executed. These results form the very basis for the following specification of the EDITS target groups and their benefits.

3.3.1 B2C Level of EDITS The EDITS Services provided by the different partners are the link towards the end-users. So this part of the EDITS project targets the business-to-consumer area.

So the target groups for the b2c level are the end-users/European citizens/travellers that are al-ready user or are potential users of the EDITS Services.

Based on the results obtained this group can be divided into three main groups:

- Commuters

- Tourists

- Business travellers

EDITS for commuters:

Commuters travelling across the borders within the CENTROPE region are a relevant target group for the EDITS Services. When travelling regularly across borders the relevance of the cur-rent traffic situation or even different options for travelling are very high for travellers. As analysed in WP3 there are different reasons for commuting e.g. commuting to work, commuting to school, accompaniment etc.

As the user questionnaire has shown the major frequency of commuting is less than twice a month. This result is very interesting regarding the EDITS targets. People commuting regularly, but not every day will be more open using traveler information to find out about different options for commuting, especially as they are not travelling every day.

The cooperation with organisations dealing with regional development in the bordering regions in Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia should be established in order to spread the ED-ITS results on regional level, e.g in local newspapers, newsletters of small cities, etc. Further-more, based on the results obtained, this target group can be reached by the means of additional information and PR activities of the regional operators (e.g. by GYSEV, KORDIS, VOR).

EDITS for tourists / private travellers:


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This target group focus on end-users travelling across borders for private purposes (e.g. for tour-istic purposes, shopping, visits of family and friends, etc.).

This target group is interesting for EDITS as end-users travelling for private purposes are often change their travel destination or travel to these destinations for the first time, having a need for adequate, easy to access information on cross-border public transport information, as well as in-dividual transport information. This is especially true for tourists.

The user questionnaire has shown, considering the fact the results are highly influenced by a ma-jority of the Czech respondents, that the highest number of trips led to the Czech Republic (74 %), with domination of the more frequent trips. Other countries with high share of arrival are the Austria and Slovakia. Other countries are visited very rarely. The ratio of using of the individual car transport and public transport is usually about 50:50, with very various share of the combina-tive transport mode (1 % - almost 35 %). Other transport modes are not significant.

In the case of the private trips, the users are prone to change the final destination. 30 % of re-spondents change the destination every time (probably tourist trips), 56 % of respondents change the destination sometime (probably combination of the tourist trips and visiting of the friends).

For EDITS these results mean that this can be one of the main target groups for the future –providing accessible, accurate information in the tourists own languages for the most used transport modes (for car and public transport). Having this in mind the focus on touristic infor-mation or the cooperation with associations focusing on tourists should be considered for the fur-ther dissemination of EDITS.

EDITS for business travellers:

The last one of the identified EDITS end-user target groups are people travelling for business reasons.

Also for this target group the user questionnaire has delivered some interesting results: The share of the respondents with at least one trip is lower than in the case of the private trips. The frequency of trips is much lower in other countries again with little more trips to Austria and Slo-vakia. Again, the ratio of using of the individual car transport and public transport is usually about 50:50, with very various share of the combinative transport mode (1 - 10 %). Other transport modes are not significant. There is only one exception, in the Czech Republic, trains are the most used mode of transport for business trips, with almost 40 % share of all the business trips. In combination with the bus transport the share of the public transport is more than 50 %, with other 10 % in combination transport. In the case of the business trips, the share of the regular trips is significantly bigger, but a change of the destination is typical for 57 % respondents.


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Concluding it can be stated also for this target group that business travellers have a huge poten-tial as EDITS service users, especially when changing the destination or mode of transport. Whereas tourists can be reached by targeting specific organisations business travellers are harder to reach in this respect. Therefor advertisement and PR activities directed to the travellers during the journey or at important transport hubs or when using the applications of the transport operators are important measures. As already mentioned when analyzing the target group of commuters – it is important that the local operators in the CENTROPE region, that have been part of the EDITS project, start to disseminate this additional feature of their journey planners in order to reach also the group of business travellers. This can include “classic PR measures” like advertisement, but also web-banners, articles in the newsletters of the operators, postings using the social media pages, etc.

3.3.1 B2B Level of EDITS The second level is regarding the business to business part of EDITS. Next to the final “products” as the EDITS end-user services, the approach and system behind EDITS enables additional ser-vices for the public administrations, public transport operators, infrastructure providers, etc. But furthermore the EDITS approach supports transport operators (e.g. public transport operators, motorway operators, etc) and public administrations to fulfil their tasks better – so far the hypoth-esis.

But the question is – what are the highest benefits for this target group? What are the main “sell-ing points”? How can these stakeholders be reached when it comes to the further deployment of EDITS?

In order to reach this target group a specific “public body questionnaire” has been developed in order to assess the EDITS approach from the side of the operators, but furthermore to get an in-sight on the view of the benefits that are expected from this target group. One part of the EDITS public body questionnaire focused on the benefits that these stakeholders expect from the EDITS approach. The respondents have been asked to assess the correctness of the statements from their personal/organizational point of view:


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Figure 6: EDITS stakeholder questionnaire – question 15

The answers provided by the 39 respondent are summarized in the following table:


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0 0 1 1 15

9

4

1311

7

14

25

26

22 26

22

17

59

31

9

3

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Iproved fulfilment oftasks of publicadministration

Added value toexisting traveller info

services

Technical barriers Contributes toimplementation of EU

guidelines

Enables cross-bordercooperation

Leads to cost savings

Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

Figure 7: EDITS stakeholder questionnaire – results The results show that the clearest benefit is the added value that EDITS can bring to existing traveller information services. This has been agreed or even more strongly agreed by almost 90% of the respondents. Furthermore almost 80% of the respondents agreed to the fact that ED-ITS enables, or even fosters this cross-border cooperation and can therefor enable more than da-ta exchange, but provides the basis for more cross-border cooperation and additional services in the future.

The third of the most agreed benefits of EDITS has been mentioned before. 77% of the respond-ents agreed to the statement that EDITS can improve the fulfilment of task of the public admin-istration or of public service operators.

Having in mind that more than three-fourths of the respondents are directly involved in the pro-cess of traveller information provision this result is significant.

The picture looks similar when it comes to the contribution of EDITS to the implementation of the European guidelines, requirements, duties (e.g. regarding from INSPIRE, the ITS Directive 2010/40/EU, EasyWay Deployment Guidelines, etc). EDITS can support, or even more enable the national stakeholders to fulfil the requirements deriving from the European guidelines – this


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fact also supports the need for harmonised deployment within Europe. The results of the ques-tionnaire show that also the involved stakeholders see a clear benefit of EDITS in this respect.

An interesting result in this context is the answer to the last question, regarding the costs savings that can be enabled through EDITS. 69% of the respondents agreed to this statement, whereas 13% strongly disagreed. The workshops have shown that some of the partners that have been taken part in EDITS clearly state, that after the process set up no additional costs are expected from operating EDITS, as the costs for operating the service is covered by the operational costs of the national services. Other operators have stated the problem that the costs for the regular updates (manual adaptions, licenses, etc) are significant and need to be considered for all future activities. The results of the questionnaire also support this ambivalent view on this topic. De-pending of the national organisational structures and the business strategy of the involved part-ners the follow-up costs for operating and maintaining these cross-border services are a relevant issues for future activities. So, as part of this business plan, it has to be stated, that the follow-up costs have to be considered when discussing regularly updates of the services. But as this is strongly dependent of the deployed EDITS service and the organisational structure of the partner no “one-and-only” solution can be presented here.

When it comes to the benefits of the EDITS target group of public administrations and transport service operators it can be concluded that EDITS can really make a difference regarding the provision of value-added services, cooperating across borders and fulfilling the tasks of the public hand in a more efficient way. The approach of EDITS is an appro-priate way to set up cross-border cooperation in a sustainable way that meets the needs of the different stakeholders. The stakeholders support this approach because of ex-pected higher efficiency on local and regional level than they expect from other approach-es. And last but not least the stakeholders from the public side appreciate the flexibility to adapt the deployed services within the main framework of the EDITS MTI according to their local needs!

These are the main points to focus on when trying to reach these stakeholders. Different from the end-users the stakeholders have to be informed about the possibilities of EDITS using different channels. Therefor it is important to spread these results (focusing on the aforementioned issues) within the transport community, relevant platforms (e.g. CENTROPE activities), Danube Region transport days, etc. Furthermore the presentation of EDITS on thematic conferences (e.g. ITS Europe Congress, ITS World Congress, etc.) will be important to raise the awareness of the rele-vant stakeholders.


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3.3.2 Conclusions on the EDITS target groups As this chapter has shown the EDITS target groups are two-fold:

On the one hand the EDITS end-user services are directed towards the end-users. As the analy-sis has shown EDITS can be of high value for commuters and business travellers on the one hand and for tourists on the other hand. To reach these groups different channels can be used and different cooperation should be set up.

On the other hand EDITS targets public administrations and transport service operators. As we have seen in the previous chapters the public bodies play an important role in the provision of the EDITS services. By implementing the EDITS approach these stakeholders will be enabled to of-fer value-added services to their customers, but furthermore it support and enables them to fulfil their public task in a better or more efficient way, also when it comes to fulfil requirements deriv-ing from the European guidelines e.g. from the European ITS directive. To reach this target group complete different measures are necessary, as the benefits for this target group are different.


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4. The EDITS Rollout-Plan in the regions The aim of the EDITS Roll-Out plan is to have a deeper look on the deployment of EDITS on a

short- and mid-term perspective. It will depict, based on the final results of EDITS, the next steps for the already existing EDITS services and will answer the following questions:

• How can EDITS be deployed and extended (in general)?

• What is the concrete roll-out plan separately for each demonstration region?

In this chapter the next steps of the EDITS partners are summarized, based on the presentations within the final events (either within the final conference or within the discussion of the last Steer-ing Committee meeting in Vienna in December 2014).

In general it can be stated that the end of the project is the start for the deployed EDITS Services. All partners have committed themselves to operate the services at least until the end of 2019. This doesn’t mean that the services will remain in the current status. But rather the partners have already started the discussion to further enhance the already existing services and the potential set up the cooperation after the end of the project. Also the discussions at the final conference have shown that the partners plan to implement the EDITS services as part of their “operative services” in the near future.

Furthermore – beside that fact that the cooperation on service level will continue – all partners have presented the one or other future plans for the deployment of their EDITS service.

So for the demonstration area CENTROPE the further spread regarding the geographical cover-age of EDITS will be one of the main future plans of the partners.

For the partner VOR the spread of EDITS to further regions within CENTROPE is the main focus regarding the next steps e.g. to extend the covered geographical service area to the main capi-tals, including Budapest, Prague and extended Bratislava. Next to that the extension of the cov-erage to all of Hungary, Czech Republic, include more of Slovakia would be an option for future activities. Also a cooperation with Germany/Bavaria would be an interesting future plan.

The partners from the Czech Republic focused their future plans on one hand on additional re-sources and data e.g. adding real-time vehicles’ positions to the Doprava-Brno app providing more specified routing information to the travellers, as well as on the other hand on promotion of the service through IDS JMK POSEIDON and set the basis for further cooperation with the partners from the Vienna Region.

For Hungary the main focus lies on the on the one hand on the link of of the EDITS Service with the passenger information system of GYSEV (incl. passenger information at the stations, platform displays, departures monitors, etc). On the other hand GYSEV plans to enhance the existing sys-tem by providing real time public transport data and real time traffic data in the journey planner. Another interesting future step can be a harmonisation of the planning of timetables and enabling


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synergies through harmonised planning activities. In line with the plans of the other partners in the CENTROPE region the future the covered area of the Hungarian EDITS region of Györ-Sopron is planned to be enlarged, covering whole Hungary.

Also for the EDITS triangle demonstration area between Austria, Italy and Slovenia the future plans have been formulated. From the Austrian side the exchange of traffic messages with fur-ther neighbouring countries will be fostered in the next step, including additional traffic messages. For the Italian part the EDITS approach will be utilised in order to extend the monitored area add-ing further motorways, as well as other modes of transport, including microscopic traveller infor-mation as well.

For demonstration area in Italy, covering the bordering provinces of Modena and Ferrara, the im-plemented services is planned to be extended by integrating additional data sources to the de-veloped EDITS service and therefore extending the service coverage.

Looking at the next steps for EDITS in the near future the picture is clear – first of all the partners will have to finalise the implementation of their services, ensuring stable and bug-fixed systems. Based on that, the next steps will focus of the extension, even of the services themselves (includ-ing additional data) or of the geographical coverage. But how will EDITS develop in the mid- or long-term perspective? The next chapter will provide a first outlook.


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5. The EDITS Big Picture – Outlook and Recommendations This chapter will take a look on the long-term perspective and the next steps of EDITS on a stra-tegic level and will provide an answer to the following questions:

• What is the relevance of EDITS in the policy context?

• What are potential future countries/regions for a further spread of EDITS? Which partners/ regions/countries/organisations should be covered by further EDITS activities to reach this goal of seamless cross-border traveller-information service? What is the further potential of EDITS (also based on the stakeholder inputs and user requirements)?

• What is the EDITS Big Picture?

5.1 EDITS in the policy context As the recent activities, e.g. the presentations and discussions at the final conference in Vienna in December 2014 have shown the topic of EDITS is very high on the strategic Agenda on Euro-pean, national and regional / cross-regional level. Also current results of further projects show the relevance of implementations in this area. Based on the results of the cross-border mobility survey (between eastern AT and western HU) carried out within the European project EMAH (Eco-mobility in the Austro-Hungarian border region), the need of providing traveller information to end-users was clearly raised. Generally the project EMAH is funded in the framework of the cross-border co-operation programme Austria-Hungary 2007-2013 by the European Regional Development Fund. Considering the increasing total num-ber of commuters travelling by car and by train between the cross-border regions of Austria and Hungary, mobility-measures were elaborated within EMAH in order to provide and promote eco-friendly transport modes. As a result, implementing multimodal cross-border traveller infor-mation systems was assessed as a top-ranked measure in order to promote and enable the usage of eco-friendly transport modes. So it seems that the results of EDITS are highly needed. In particular EDITS – considering the approach on the one hand and the results (in form of services, as well as specifications) on the other hand - have a great potential to foster the goals defined in European, national and regional strategies: The development and deployment of multimodal traveller information services is one of the top priorities of the European Commission: “The White Paper on Transport (2011) suggested that curbing mobility is not an option, but it also set the goal of integrating transport modes for seamless multimodal door-to-door travel


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(Initiative 22). Our vision is that travel, already at the planning stage, should be a user-friendly experience. Multimodal scheduling, information, booking and payment systems and inte-grated ticketing via one website could greatly contribute to such perception. The link the first/last mile with long-distance travel should be ensured.” As presented by Dorota Szeligowska, European Commission, DG MOVE, Unit C3 "ITS", at the EDITS final conference the EC has taken different actions in the last years to foster the development of multimodal traveller information:

• Study "Towards an European multimodal journey planner" (completed in September 2011)

• 1st Smart Mobility Challenge for multimodal journey planners (2011-2012)

• Informal Ministerial Meeting on Transport and Telecommunications in Cyprus in July 2012

• Two public consultations, both followed up by stakeholders' workshops (April and Novem-ber 2013)

• Preparatory Action aiming at developing the framework conditions for a "European pas-senger transport, information and booking interface across transport modes"

According to the presentation the main pre-requisites for quality multimodal information ser-vices are : fair and equal access to available data accompanied with relevant safeguards, overcoming the currently fragmented legislative framework, an improvement of the availability of data, ensuring the interoperable or compatible formats for data exchange and facilitating the efficient stakeholders' cooperation. EDITS is tackling all of these issues. Therefore the lessons learned and the commonly agreed specifications for the data exchange performed within EDITS can be an important input for the further activities of the European Commission: Currently the specifications on multimodal traveller information services in accordance to the European ITS Directive (2010/40/EU) are developed. These specifications are a delegated act under the ITS Directive and will be binding on all stakeholders but no obligation to deploy ser-vices. The results of EDITS will be valid input for these specifications, spreading the EDITS pro-ject results all over Europe. Furthermore the EDITS concept is mentioned as one of the key concepts within the Action Plan accompanying the European Union’s Strategy for the Danube Region where one of the key actions in priority area 1 (to improve mobility and multimodality) is focusing on the deploy-ment of multimodal services.


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The aforementioned links to the European and regional strategies show very well that EDITS has raised awareness on European level and has the potential to contribute to the goals defined on European level.

5.2 EDITS Big Picture – Further steps of EDITS in the long-term perspective As we have seen so far EDITS has a great potential to bring substantial input in order to reach the goals defined on a strategic level. On the operative level the EDITS partners have defined their next steps in the short run. But what are the expectations of the stakeholders how EDITS will develop in the long-run? To answer this question one has to take a deeper look on the outcome of the user assessment workshops, the discussions of the final conference of EDITS, as well as on the results of the user and stakeholder questionnaire (as described in output O.6.1.1 and O6.1.2).

5.2.1 Further development of EDITS based on the stakeholders‘ feedback

The results of the stakeholder questionnaire have shown that the decentralized EDITS approach is favourable in comparison to centralized or combined approaches. The main reason was the better flexibility to adjust to the regional needs. From the technical side the main reason for using this decentralized approach based on the exchange of data was the maintaining of quality of da-ta! To ensure a high quality of data for the end-users is one of the most important issues for the stakeholders in this respect. For the future activities this means that the quality assurance should be in the centre of attention. Regarding the next steps one has always to have in mind the challenges that are faced when talking about the deployment of cross-border information services. The results of the stakeholder questionnaire have shown that the most important barriers are the lack of data and information in the different regions and organisational and legal obstacles. Here is a need for fostering frame-work conditions that will enable the cross-border cooperation in a more efficient way. The respondents of the stakeholder questionnaire considered the link between more countries and participation of additional transport service operators as one of the most important steps for the future of EDITS. Most of respondents emphasized the significance of cross-border transport, not just in the context of long-distance transport. Last but not least the topic of the interconnection of tariffs and harmonised management of lines has been mentioned as one of the next steps after the exchange of information. The workshops have shown very similar results. Regarding the future development of the EDITS the main conclusions of the workshop are summarized below:


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• The existing pilots should be further extended, not only in terms of geographical coverage, but also including other modes and integration of further data

• Integration of further dynamic data • Extension of the coverage -> nation-wide service availability • Further extension to the most relevant tourist destinations in CENTROPE (in order to reach

especially this target group)

5.2.1 Conclusions and Outlook Based on lessons learned within EDITS project, the feedback from user’s and stakeholders and the plans of the individual EDITS partners four main directions could have been identified for the future EDITS activities, that can be pursued on a strategic level (whereas some of them are more interrelated than others):

- Extension of the geographical coverage of EDITS: This includes the further spread of EDITS to additional regions. This has several dimensions.

o Further regional coverage: On the one hand this includes the extension of the cov-ered regions of the already existing EDITS partner countries (Austria, Italy, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia), to allow the different demonstration areas to merge.

o National coverage: For the partners in the CENTROPE region one important topic was not only the regional extension, but the coverage on nation-wide level (espe-cially for Austria, Czech Republic and Hungary this has been discussed intensively within the final events).

o Coverage of the Danube Region: The extension of EDITS to the (whole) Danube Region has been identified as one of the important strategic goals on the long-run.

This includes further cooperation with additional partners in the considered regions and countries.

- Enhancement of existing services: The further extension of the recently implemented services will be of relevance for the upcoming activities. This can include the enhancement in term of additional data, dynamic data, as well as of additional modes.

- From the exchange of data and information towards ticketing and booking: The dis-cussions and results have shown that one of the main topics for the stakeholders is the in-tegration of ticketing services into the EDITS approach. But all stakeholders have agreed that this is more than one step ahead and a lot of work has been done to let this become reality.

- Harmonised planning: Based on the aforementioned steps one possible long-term per-spective can be the harmonisation of planning activities across borders.


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As we have learned from the discussions the EDITS approach is feasible and has some ad-vantages that enable the actual deployment of cross-border services. But there are more chal-lenges to be faced. The first steps have been taken –but they are just the beginning. There is much more to do in the future – and EDITS will further pursue its vision to enhance the personal mobility of Central European citizens by providing interoperable and multimodal traveller information services!

o6.2.9 – final edits business plan - central2013.eu – final edits business plan page 2 . ce...

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