Photo: Victor Prieto Recently, GTD has obtained the Generalitat de Catalunya’s public contract for the development of the SGIT project – Transports Integrated Pricing Management System – for the cities of Lleida, Girona and Tarragona. The contract is given by ATM institution (Mobility Authority) which, at the same time, depends on the “Departament de Política Territorial i Obres Públiques” of the Generalitat de Catalunya (Transport department of the Catalan government). The SGIT project allows the usage of many different public transports – Subway, bus, tramcar and train – through a single and rechargeable contactless card, avoiding the need of purchasing a new ticket in case of changing the service or vehicle in a single trip. In the Barcelona area there is a similar system already in use, but based on non-rechargeable magnetic cards. The card type chosen for the project is contactless. To use it, you just need to pass the card less than ten centimeters (=four inches) from the card-reader and the trip authorisation or checking is made. Also, this kind of card offers the following advantages: - It is customizable. - It is rechargeable – Also through the Internet – and with different types of tickets. - It can be replaced for a new one in case of loss or damage. - It keeps a history of the operations done by storing them in its 4Kb memory. The new management system will receive, store and manage, due to the rechargeable contactless cards, lots of information that will ease the fraud detection, the calculation of economical compensation, benefits distribution and quantities to pay to transport operators and resellers. What tasks does the SGIT perform? SGIT is the public central management system enabling the application of the transport’s integrated pricing policy. Essentially, SGIT gets the data from all the actions using the contactless cards – Ticketing purchase, card recharges, card checking, card cancellations, etc… - to use it for: - The distribution calculation. In other words, it calculates the benefits corresponding to each transport operator, depending on the number of trips offered. - Allows data, information and knowledge treatment for business analysis usage. - Controls fraud. Development plan and system actors? In the first phase of the project, first quarter of the year 2008, the program will be implemented in the area of Lleida, precisely in the Segrià region, which involves 38 towns and other villages from the surrounding regions. In the project scope it’s also included the city of Lleida, region’s main city. Besides the figure below, you may also see the list of transport services involved in the SGIT’s operation. Autobusos de Lleida Autocars Agramunt Autocars Morell Autocars Solé Seró S.L. Autotransporte Parellada Bullich Grup Autotransport, S.L. Empresa Lax, S.A. Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya. FGC Miquel Gamón, S.L. Sociedad Anónima Alsina Graells de Auto Transportes Taxis-Lluís Vidal Antolín Taxi Baix Segre - Manel Tersa Segarra Xampany S.L. As a reference data, more than 7 millions of users took the Lleida’s city bus service during the past year. Furthermore, the SGIT system is also going to be implemented first to ATM’s transports services of Girona, and then to Tarragona’s ATM afterwards, both tasks included within the current contract. How SGIT is going to be developed? Technically, SGIT is a J2EE/Struts application that stores and retrieves information from an Oracle 10g clustered data base, using also other technologies such as web services and Ajax. SGIT has been based in WC3 – Web Control Center Core -, an internal GTD’s project that gathers together a set of utilities, frameworks and tools used in former application’s developments upon the J2EE platform. WC3 summarizes the common patterns, methodologies, programming doings and experiences achieved along the GTD lifetime. This background is the key that makes possible to us to face the developing of SGIT system in such a short time. But, far from given WC3 for ended, we keep on improving the framework every day, adding new capabilities and features with the simple aim of making it more extensible, flexible and reusable for other projects developed within the company.
