The TAP-MD Working Group, one of the working groups of the Passenger Services group, chaired by Clemens Gantert from DB, met on 20 and 21 February in Brussels. The main European railway undertakings, including Russia, took part in the meeting.

TAP-MD is in charge of developing interoperable solutions for online rail distribution reservation and control. The group held its first meeting of this year in Brussels hosted by HitRail. This was the first meeting of the group in the new PSG organisation and the group now covers the reservation services previously managed by the REG group.

Throughout 2018, at a rhythm of one meeting per month, a temporary work group of TAP-MD including participants of the NRT (non-integrated rail tickets) group achieved a solution for NRT as e-tickets. It provides a specification for online validation of such tickets as well as a white list and a black list and check-in mechanisms to make the control procedures more automated and resilient. An important topic of the NRT e-ticketing is to include the options for a train conductor to make amendments to NRT tickets. The new specification (IRS – International Railway Solution) was presented and approved by the group at the meeting.

The group discussed and approved a proposal to support the exchange of VAT in the reservation services. Presentations on upcoming new reservation systems of ÖBB and SZ were given.

Results of this Working Group were presented at a dedicated UIC-ERA meeting in the framework of the UIC-ERA Technical Agreement which aims to synchronise UIC International Railway Solutions (IRS) and ERA Technical Documents (TD).

In order to avoid misunderstandings with the ERA Working Groups, TAP-MD was renamed PSS, Passenger Services Solutions, responsible for the International Railway Solutions (IRS) for Rail Distribution of tickets.