UIC is pleased to bring to all transportation sector actors the necessary IT tools and technical specification, to facilitate the journeys of European passengers.

The complexity of purchasing rail tickets is a disincentive for customers to switch to rail, especially for international journeys that include connections to public transport. UIC and Ticket Vendors have therefore developed the concept of OSDM (Open Sales and Distribution Model) to simplify the purchase of tickets, and to enable all ticketing stakeholders to have common standards and procedures. The Open Sales and Distribution Model (OSDM) is a rail sector specification enabling interoperable ticket sales for trains and other modes of transport and is defined in the new UIC International Railway Solution (IRS) 90918-10. 

What is OSDM?

OSDM (Open Sales and Distribution Model) is the new Europe-wide B2B Sector Distribution Initiative (Railways and Ticket Vendors) seeking an Open IT- Specification for ticket sales, reservations, and price distribution, a project jointly managed by UIC (the International Union of Railways) and the ticket vendors represented by EU Travel Tech and ECTAA (European Travel Agents’ and Tour Operators’ Association). The standard is composed of two parts: online distribution (fares, tariffs and reservation) and offline distribution (fares and tariffs). OSDM enables the sale of both online and offline tickets in the same protocol. For online distribution the new OSDM standard uses an API (Application Programming Interface), which will allow the distribution in real time of international travel tariffs and prices and seat reservations among railway companies’ distribution systems and make train tickets available to third party vendors around the world. The standard is defined in IRS 90918-10 and provides a new open sales and distribution interface for the passenger transport sector as follows:

• all fares including domestic ones (offline and online)
• interface for (multimodal) trip search (online) including bus or local transport ticketing
• interface for booking/reservation (online)
• after sales for booking/ticket reservations and ancillary services (offline and online)
• graphical seat reservation (online)
• OSDM is prepared for multimodality extensions (MaaS).

The same technical OSDM JSON format used online is also used offline to exchange fares and tariffs for NRT (non-reservation tickets) trains between railways twice per year. The UIC Database for Rail Tariffs and Fares (UIC-DRTF) replaces the former Price and Fare Information Storage (PRIFIS) international tariff distribution tool, a shared database containing prices and tariffs for non-yielded tickets.

To enable widespread take-up by all transportation distribution actors, UIC has decided to publish the OSDM specification IRS 90918-10 in Apache 2.0 open source licence on the GitHub website.

What is the aim of this standard and its online and offline implementations?

OSDM aims to simplify the booking process for railway customers and lower complexity and distribution costs for distributors and railway carriers. By collaborating more closely with distributors using a single protocol between the different actors (Distributors, Allocators, Carriers), the railway sector as a whole has taken a major step forward in simplifying ticket distribution for passengers, including through-ticketing, and in developing a consumer driven, innovative and a competitive distribution solution based on transparency and sustainability.

What are the main benefits of

this new OSDM model?

Railway customers will more easily be able to purchase rail and multimodal transport tickets across Europe at the most beneficial prices and tariff conditions. Thanks to OSDM’s ability to provide a combination of fares, customers will be able to combine fares according to existing fare combinations as well as new fares and/ or combination models. Railway operators will be able to provide better services and attract new customers thanks to a combination of technical innovation and smart mobility solutions for seamless travel. By streamlining the distribution process, the railway sector will benefit from reduced development and distribution costs. Ticket vendors will benefit from improved connectivity in railway ticket distribution and be able to sell tickets using a simpler distribution model. OSDM meets the market need for one-stop-shop distribution services and passenger expectations for through-ticketing, thus enabling increasingly seamless and sustainable travel across Europe.

What is the current status of OSDM?

As an important first step, the OSDM working group validated OSDM specification in December 2020, which can now be used freely by any distribution system.Then UIC delivered the offline UIC-DRTF for the 24 European railway partners in September 2021 and it is confidently used since. It is state of the art technology provided as a Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud-based solution

For the online OSDM API, major Ticket Vendors companies in Czechia and Sweden as well as numerous European Rail companies implement it in 2022 and the following years.

A common control repository:

UIC eTCD (electronic Ticket Control Database)

eTCD, electronic Ticket Control Database, is a centralised, real-time passenger ticket management system developed by UIC with the support of Hit Rail B.V., for use by railway companies around the world and in Europe in particular.

To allow full digitalization of rail tickets, all fraud scenarios, previously avoided by the CIT secured ticket paper, must be prevented.

The service deployed by UIC helps railway companies to automatically control non-reservation barcode ticket printed on blank paper or display on screens, Information is exchanged in real-time between ticket issuers and passenger carriers. It allows the controlled staff aboard train to prevent fraud and also extent ticket validity, confirm delay, declare non-used tickets, and upgrades and downgrades class.

After just one year of design work, the eTCD service has been in operation since February 2020, and is being implemented as an important cornerstone of UIC’s distribution eco-system.

European ticket issuers and passenger carriers as BeNeRail, CD, CFL, DB, DSB, Eurail, NS, PKP, SBB, SNCB and Trenitalia have either already established connections to eTCD or will be connected from 2022.

The eTCD service enables full paperless ticketing, thus marking the end of paper train tickets. This increases ticket security, prevents fraud and reinforces electronic ticketing capabilities. The service enables faster boarding, helps cancel and refund tickets more easily, and informs passengers of changes to their tickets in real-time, thus enhances the overall travel experience and more effectively meets customer needs.

Barcodes represent ticket data in machine readable form. Because they can easily be printed on paper or displayed on a screen (smartphone), no special technology or hardware is required to host the data. This makes distribution of rail or other ticket data very simple – the customer who purchases the service does not need chip cards, e-tokens or secured CIT paper.

Barcodes are static once they are printed. They may also be dynamic when displayed on a screen as they can be regenerated using variable information. This significantly increases protection against copyfraud.

Barcodes are also very useful for occasional tickets: no extra hardware is needed and interoperability between operators can be organised easily as barcodes are standardized (e.g. Aztec open standard).

The most modern UIC standard in rail barcode ticketing is the Flexible Content Barcode (FCB).

The FCB standard is an Aztec barcode. It offers excellent error correction (the barcode can be scratched or folded), can hold a large volume of binary data and is available in many IT development tools both for creating and reading barcodes. Most of these IT tools are free of charge.

The FCB barcode holds all transport contracts in an open, unencrypted format. The data itself is signed using asymmetric signature algorithms, which guarantees a very high level of security and prevents counterfeiting. These security algorithms are also a market standard and are included in many libraries of existing development software (Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA)).

Various contracts (O/D tickets, pass tickets, city tickets, reservations, group tickets, ancillary services, customer cards, etc.) are defined in the FCB dataset. Different contracts may be combined, which means that multiple rail legs and passenger types (adults, children, dogs, etc.) can be stored in a single UIC FCB barcode.

UIC provides the files and libraries needed to create the barcodes on GitHub, ready to be integrated in development projects. FCB is defined in the standards of UIC (IRS 90918-9) and ERA (European Railway Agency), where it is part of the TAP/TSI regulation (B12). FCB is part of French standardised national ticketing, called “intercode” (ref. XP P99-405-6). The FCB can be read with a smartphone or a tablet with a built-in camera. Specific extra hardware is not required.



The FCB standard defines both static and dynamic barcodes. Static barcodes can be issued on paper or on screen, while dynamic barcodes – which change every few seconds – can be displayed on screen only. A dynamic barcode is an excellent extra safeguard against copy fraud.

FCB is currently being deployed by railways in Europe as they make enhancements to their ticketing systems.

The URT is a UIC standard to be displayed on screen or printed on a blank paper. URT should be distributed as .PDF on several pages. The URT layout defined in UIC IRS 90918-8 is foreseen to be used in conjunction with the Flexible Content Barcode (FCB) defined in UIC IRS 90918-9.

All previous four existing UIC layouts defined (RCT2, RCCST, A4RT and FST) are designed for only one (IRT) or a limited number of travel legs (NRT) and for one same passenger type (adult, children, dog…) with no possibility to combine NRT and IRT

Because the FCB definition can contain several legs/trains and several different passengers in one unique Barcode and because OSDM distribution protocol definition in IRS 90918-10 allows to deliver to the customer a complex international journey for different passenger’s and ticket types in one stop shop, a new ticket layout for the customer is needed.

URT displays all complex journey information on several passenger and ticket types (NRT, IRT etc.) for all the travel chain. URT enables also to display ancillary services (reservation, bike, luggage etc.).

For the European passenger clear ticket information understanding, a common layout is necessary for international journey tickets. Nevertheless, URT may be also used for domestic transportation and for only one Passenger or one leg.

The URT is flexible enough to display in one document all the tickets representing one contract of carriage (through-ticket) or separate contracts where applicable in accordance with requirements of PRR. 

Conclusion

OSDM, eTCD, FCB and URT UIC collective solutions make a positive contribution to the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of the communities served by railways.