Roberta Rizzo (PSG Chairwoman Trenitalia), Luca Mariorenzi (PES Chairman Trenitalia) and Marc Guigon (UIC Passenger Director) chaired the Plenary Meeting of the Passenger Services Group in Berlin.
At the invitation of Deutsche Bahn, 30 participants representing CD, CFL, CIT, NS, OBB, SBB, SJ, SNCB, SNCF, Trenitalia, UIC, UZ and ZSSK gathered for a one-day meeting.
It was first announced that following the railway CEO High-Level Passenger meeting in Barcelona on 4 October, all current distribution solutions FSM, UIC nTM and ETCD would be aligned in 2020.
The UIC Audit Team Chairman Mr Olivier Roy, Passenger Account and Ticketing Rules Inspection Committee (PATRIC) presented their achievements and their planned activity. Railway experts are welcome to apply to join the Audit Team.
UIC Passage coordinator, Vanessa Perez, presented the challenges overcome by the group and the continuing improvements over the last 10 years in international assistance for train passengers with reduced mobility and the need to keep working together in the same direction.
The UIC Standardisation Passenger SPOC (Single Point of Contact), Fabrice Setta, presented the state-of-the-art in the migration from UIC leaflets to International Railway Solution (IRS).
The MERITS database containing all European train schedules has now been commercialised since March 2019 and user licenses are sold and distributed on the UIC website. This has enabled important cuts to be made in railway maintenance costs. The PRIFIS database containing all European kilometric train prices was successfully yearly updated in September 2019. The new PRIFIS database should be in operation in 2021.
CIT representative, Sandra Dobler, presented the latest discussion on the Agreement on Journey Continuation (AJC), the Accord International Voyageurs (AIV), the Manual for International Rail Tickets (MIRT), the new Guidelines on Data Protection (GDP) and the Manual on Data Protection (MDP). A boiler contract on Air and Rail cooperation has been proposed by CIT to complete on the legal aspects of the work done on the technical aspects by the UIC technical group.
Mathieu Wojcicki, representing UIC Finance Department, presented the 2019 and 2020 budget approved by the plenary.
Luca Mariorenzi, PES chairman, presented the PES technical and commercial activity covering the new Tariff Model, the implementation of the new Electronic Ticket Control Database (ETCD), the IRS enhancement on rail ticket layouts and barcodes and the multimodal projects Door-to-Door and Air + Rail.
The next meeting will take place at UIC on 7 April and 25 November 2020.
