Deutsche Bahn Launches Touch&Travel

Touch&Travel could streamline travel dramatically, Mehdorn says—and hopefully lure people out of their cars and onto Deutsche Bahn trains. "Our goal is to give customers an easy, accessible network that will let them use public transportation anywhere in Germany without barriers," he explains. "This lets people go practically from door to door with a simple, transparent system."

Despite the fanfare, today's launch is essentially an experiment. Two hundred people will take part in the initial pilot project, which is restricted to parts of the public transportation network in Berlin, the entire public transport system of neighboring Potsdam, and trips between Berlin and the central German city of Hanover, a heavily traveled route served by several train lines. "We wanted a test area that combines high-speed long-distance trains, local trains and public transportation," says Bjoern Robbel, Vodafone's Touch&Travel technical project leader.

In Berlin, DB chairman Hartmut Mehdorn (left) and Vodafone Germany CEO Friedrich Joussen (right) use a Touchpoint terminal and RFID-enabled phones to demonstrate how Touch & Travel works.

During the pilot's initial phase, volunteers will still require standard tickets. If the experiment works, then the system is expected to be tested under real conditions this fall, with bills sent to travelers at the end of each month in lieu of paper tickets. Touch&Travel wouldn't be available Germany-wide until 2010 at the earliest. One reason the full rollout is so far off, designers explain, is that cell phones capable of using NFC frequencies have yet to make it to the market in a major way. The NFC-equipped phones used in the pilot are made by Motorola, which hopes projects such as Touch&Travel could hasten the spread of this capability.

"Not a lot of handsets have the chips inside, because the market demand isn't there," says Olaf May, Motorola Germany's general manager for mobile devices, and a partner in the project. "When the market is there, then every handset will have one." According to May, the chip is simple to integrate into phones, and should be a standard feature by 2010.

Although the project only has 200 participants so far, the initial infrastructure investment is substantial: 1,500 Touchpoint terminals have been installed at stations in and around Berlin, as well as at 17 stops along the Berlin-Hanover route. The terminals are built by Netherlands-based NXP Semiconductors. The system's software is being handled by Atron Electronic, which specializes in electronic ticketing and customer tracking in transportation systems. Frank Rudolph, Atron's marketing and sales director, says he's already fielding licensing inquiries for the software applications from Austria and other nations.

In 2007, Rhein-Main Verkehrsverbund (RMV), the mass-transit authority for Frankfurt and the surrounding region, installed RFID-enabled ConTags (short for Contact Tags) at 700 bus, tram and train stops, as well as at the city's airport. The ConTags contain passive NXP NFC tags. Users can touch their Nokia 6131 phones to the ConTags, which are being installed at bus shelters, or on ticket machines at bus and train stations.

Once the phone reads a ConTag, a software program previously downloaded to the user's phone via the Internet opens on the handset's display screen. The traveler can then download an electronic ticket onto the phone, and pay the bill using a credit or debit card at a later date (see Frankfurt Widens Its NFC-Enabled Transit Network).