e-Ticket: SNCF pushes even more their concepts

The railway company takes us decidedly to prefer the train. After the ticket withdraw in agency and electronic tickets, the SNCF has set another challenge: implementing e-ticket, a virtual train ticket to facilitate trips of its customers in France.

The dematerialization of ticket is one of the main project of the SNCF this year, as reported by the daily newspaper “Les Echos”. The announcement was made last weekend by Mireille Faugère, CEO delegated “Voyageurs France-Europe” with the SNCF.

The principle of e-ticket is simple: the customer ID, which will allow the controller, once the passenger on the train, to check availability, thanks to a terminal connected to a database. Therefore no needs to go to withdraw its ticket from an automat or a counter.

A gradual introduction over the year 2009

First case: the client has a business card issued by the SNCF. At this point, this card serves as an ID number. Second case: the traveler does not have one of these cards. He will have then to provide himself with a paper which will print a falsifiable identification number by the controller.

As a first step, the identification number via a paper will be preferred, the card will not be widespread until 2010. And in total, approximately 10 000 persons will be trained through e-learning modules.

A testing phase will be launched this month. with an update of the software used in their terminal, the controllers should be able to identify these virtual tickets on all major networks in France by the end of 2009, and even the entire territory covered by the TER (Regional Express Trains).