Marc Guigon, from UIC, reported on the latest news relating to their activities and management. The most important was the announcement that Iñaki Barrón had been appointed to take on a new international assignment by his seconding company. It was also announced that the “Commercial and Distribution Forum” will change its name. It will become a Sector for some Passenger issues.
At the commercial group, there were presentations by the different chairmen on their working group’s current issues: IRT (Integrated Reservation Tickets), NRT (Non-Reservation Tickets), EWT (East-West Tariffs). Among them, EURAIL gave a presentation on the current activities and market developments and CIT presented the latest news on Passenger rights and new CIT products. For the first time, Ecopassenger took the floor and informed the commercial assistants about the tool developed by UIC which is able to compare the energy consumption, CO2 and exhaust atmospheric emissions for planes, cars and trains for passenger transport. Some railway undertakings already use these figures when issuing their tickets.
The day after, at the Joint Commercial and Technical meeting, there were updates on the Graphical Seat reservation project and PATRIC current activities. There was also a discussion on status and options forward relating MERITS project. Now, the MERITS tool allows Railway Undertakings to be compliant with TAP-TSI regulation before the end of this year. A point was also made on the work done to give third party access to MERITS integrated data.
Members of IRT, NRT and EWT were invited by the Technical Group to join a dedicated working group in charge of designing an “E-ticketing” and “Security in System” in international distribution taking place during 2018.
The Technical Group meeting presented the work programme for 2018:
The group will focus on e- ticketing, will support the requirements for IT & Distribution from CG and related subgroups: it will study the possible integration with interfaces of other modes of transport and start cooperating with the UIC Digital Department.
At the TG, there were also presentations given by the different chairmen on their workgroup’s current issues: TAG (Ticketing Action group), REG (Reservation Expert Group), TAP-MD (Maintenance and Development).
Meeting assistants noted that the next Commercial and Technical meetings are to be held on 14 and 15 March 2018 at UIC HQ in Paris.
