Automatic Fare Collection

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

County
A County is a territorial and administrative division of government. A County is further divided in a number of Municipalities.
The public transport services offered within a county are managed by a Public Transport Authority.

Municipality
A Municipality is always a part of a county. A municipality is a political subdivision of a county within which a municipal corporation has been established to provide general local government for a specific population concentration in a defined area.
A municipality is basically the response of the county government to the need for certain public services (i.e., public transport, …) in addition to what is available from the county or other local governments in the area.

City
A City is a part of a municipality, within one municipality one will have at the most one city. A city is a relatively permanent and highly organized centre of population, of greater size or importance than a town or village. The name city is given to certain urban communities by virtue of some legal or conventional distinction.
A City exists always out of one Urban zone.

Zone
A zone, is a geographic area used as the basis for calculating distance travelled, and thereby fares.
Zones that are not part of a city are indicated as Rural zones, zones that are marked as a city are indicated as Urban zones.

Company
A Company represents the authority (Transport Services Provider) that is responsible for the management transport services.

Entity
An Entity within a company groups all related transport services that will be managed as a whole.

Line
A Line is a grouping of routes which is generally known to the public by a similar name or number. These routes are usually very similar to each other from the topological point of view, being variants of a core route with some deviations on certain parts only.

Route
A Route is a consecutive list of stops to be halted at by a bus when it is travelling along that Route. A Route always belongs to a Line.
Since a Route is a consecutive list of Stops on a Line it indicates also the direction in which the bus will travel.

Stop
A Stop is a geographical location where Transport Services are offered to the public. One stop can contain multiple Route Access Points, where each of them will offer access to a different Route.
A Stop can be Real or Virtual . A Real stop, is a stop with get-on and get-off facilities, it is a location where a bus can stop to allow passengers to get on or off the bus (Transport Service). A Virtual stop is an abstract entity that can be defined within a zone, and that needs to be present in a route definition if that route goes through a zone without having a stop within that zone. This is required since the zone-matrix (cfr. routing algorithm) used for price & fare calculation will be build up based on the route definitions, and it is a requirement that each zone a route travels along is defined.

(Bus) Trip
A Trip is, if a bus (or multiple buses) travels along a specific Route at a specific time. A Trip is always unique within a single day of the week.

Journey
A passenger will use transport services to make a Journey.
A Journey is a connection between 2 points (zones) travelled by a passenger. A journey can exist of a single trip (if both points (zones) are along the same route) or multiple trips (if both points (zones) are not along the same route).

Transfer
If a journey exists of multiple trips then a passenger needs to change from one trip (bus) to another one. This action of changing is called a Transfer. This means that a transfer is free (no fare needs to be paid) since the passenger already has paid for the complete journey before the first trip.

Sales Process
The Sales Process is the set of procedures and actions that handle everything related to sales of Products: product selection, price calculation, product issuing …
This process will be supported by an AFC device that supports sales services.

Sales Point
A Sales Point is a location, either fixed or mobile where sales services will be delivered.

AFC (Automatic Fare Collection) Process
The AFC Process is the set actions required to handle everything related to automatic fare collection of AFC products: “Is an AFC Product valid and can it be used to gain access to a certain Transport Service ?”.

Shift
A Shift is unique identified by time, date & Driver or POS Operator.
Before a driver can start offering transport services and doing sales, using a vehicle and the AFC devices located on it, she/he needs to open a Shift and when she/he is finished these tasks on that bus he needs to close her/his Shift.
Before a POS operator can start doing sales she/he needs to open a Shift and when she/he is finished, she/he needs to close her/his Shift at the end of this task.

Driver
A Driver is a person hired by a vehicle operator to drive a vehicle. Each driver will get a schedule of the routes she/he needs to drive during each of the shifts she/he needs to perform.
A driver will also operate the AFC devices located on the vehicle to serve the passengers during the Sales and/or AFC process.

POS (Point Of Sales)
A POS or Point Of Sales is an AFC device that provides all sales functionality required to support Sales services.

POS Operator
A POS Operator is a person who will operate a POS to issue AFC Products. She/he will be responsible for the issuing of AFC products (Sales).

Transport Service
If a passenger makes a journey she/he is in fact using a transport service. It is very important to understand that the core business of the Transport Services Provider is offering & selling transport services. The main objective of the AFC solution is to support this core business of the Transport Services Provider.

Product
A product is a clear definition of a particular transport service or set of transport services offered to the public. In case of a single transport service (or single journey), a travel document on paper will be issued. In case of a set of transport services (or multiple journeys) an AFC product on a magnetic card will be issued.

Travel Document
If a passenger has bought a transport service, she/he has of course the right to make use of the service she/he has paid for. But Transport Services Provider’s inspectors need also to be able to verify that a passenger has really paid if she/he is using a transport service. To be able to make this possible, a travel document will be issued, either printed on paper or digital stored on a magnetic card, during the sales or automatic fare collection process.

AFC Product
An AFC product gives a passenger the right to make multiple journeys (spread over time or at the same time for a group (if the type of product allows this)) and will be issued as a magnetic card. This magnetic card can then be used by a passenger on the available AFC equipment (located on the buses) to perform automatic payment, from the passengers point of view, or Automatic Fare Collection, seen from an AFC System point of view.

AFC BUSINESS ENTITIES
In order to define a clear picture of all Business Processes related to the AFC Business, we need to know all the different Business Entities involved in the AFC Business and the related processes. We also need to know for each of the Business Entities what their role and responsibility is within the complete AFC Business.
If we analyze the AFC Business, we can distinguish four different entities involved in all of the

AFC Business Processes:

	Transport Network Provider
	Card Issuer
	AFC Operator
	Customer (Passenger)

Transport Network Provider
A Transport Service Provider is always responsible for the operation of a Transport Network Infrastructure.

A TSP will offer Transport Services to the public, and each passenger that uses a Transport Service need to pay a Fare for this Transport service to the Transport Network Provider. The amount of the Fare will be dependent on the kind of Transport Service used and the Fare Structure (Flat or Zonal) defined by the Transport Network Provider.

Card Issuer
The Business Entity that issues AFC products (payment cards) is called a Card Issuer.

A Card Issuer will define and issue different kinds of payment cards (value cards, journey cards, …) that can be used by a passenger to pay for transport services. A Card Issuer is also responsible for the whole operational management related to these cards.

It should be clear that to define business rules related to a new type of payment card. The card issuer needs to do this in cooperation with the transport service provider since at the end it will be the TSP who will deliver the transport services (if it is not the same company).

	AFC Operator In order to allow a customer to buy a payment card from a Card Issuer and to pay a fare for a transport service delivered by a Transport Network Provider with that payment card, an AFC Solution needs to be implemented. An AFC Solution is a distributed IT Infrastructure that consist of an AFC Front Office and AFC Back Office. The AFC Front Office is the collection of distributed equipment required to support the AFC business processes: Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) & Sales. It will be a collection of AFC devices on vehicles (bus, taxi, …) and AFC devices at fixed sales points. The AFC Back Office is all IT equipment & Software (servers, workstations, printers, Back Office Software …) required to manage and operate the AFC Solution. The AFC Back Office equipment will be centralized at a single geographical location from where the whole AFC solution will be managed. An AFC Operator is the entity that is responsible for the implementation and operation of such an AFC solution. The AFC Operator will gather all required business rules from both the transport service provider and the card issuer, needed to set up an AFC solution, and next implements and configure an AFC solution to implement all these business rules.
	Customer A Customer or Passenger is also a user of the AFC Solution. A passenger will buy a product from a card issuer. In the case she/he has bought an AFC product she/he will be able to use this product to pay for a service delivered by a transport service provider.
	Sales process The Sales process will handle everything related to the sales of transport services. First the business rules for the Sales process need to be defined and distributed to all existing Sales Points. These business rules will define the products that can be sold (product definition), also where these products can be sold (sales rules), and last but not least, also the product prices need to be defined (sales prices). At each Sales Point, all activities related to sales will be registered as sales transactions and sent to a central location (transaction processor) for further processing. After validation and fraud detection, all sales transactions will be stored in a centralized database and they will be available for further processing by other back office processes The interface of the Sales process towards the customer is or a driver (on a vehicle) or a POS operator (at a fixed Sales Point). This means that to sell a product, there is always some interaction required between the customer and a driver or POS operator performing the sales.

Last update : 14/05/02 Copyright @ Global City Management Michel GENOT