Written on 12 September 2018.

Seminar and signing of pilot contracts

The signing of agreements enabling pilotage on the joint ticketing system began on Thursday during the Seminar "Patterns for modern public transport". After the ceremonial signing of the agreements, participants of the seminar became acquainted with one of Interconnect Project’s reports, concerning the analysis of communication systems in different regions of the Southern Baltic Countries.

The agreements to join the pilot project were signed at the Marshal Office of the Pomorskie Voivodeship by representatives of the cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia, Słupsk, Tczew and Starogard Gdański and Pomeranian Voivodeship’s self-government.

-Today's signing of documents is the best proof that the joint ticketing system is moving from an analysis phase into its implementation in Pomerania- said Mieczysław Struk , Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodeship, opening the seminar and inaugurating the pilot. - Soon, the inhabitants of our region will have a very modern and user-friendly payment system for public transport tickets’ purchase.

- The pilot program is to simplify the whole process of buying tickets. Strictly speaking, we will be talking more about paying tolls and travel, rather than buying a traditional paper ticket - Krzysztof Rudziński, president of InnoBaltica , responsible for the development and implementation the joint ticket in Pomerania.

The signing of contracts, although very spectacular from the media point of view, was not the essence of last Thursday meeting. The "Benchmarks for the current public transport system" Seminar is the result of six-month work of dozens of managers and experts of public transport with the countries located in the southern Baltic.

The team working in Interconnect project is a group of people specialized in safeguard of natural environment and public transport quality’ improvement. Their goal is to develop solutions that will allow people to travel freely between the regions in the South Baltic Sea shores using public transport.

Project partners from six countries have analyzed transport systems in the following locations: Rostock in Germany, Guldborgsund in Denmark, Blekinge in Sweden, Tallinn / Viiimsi in Estonia, Klaipeda in Lithuania and the Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland. The output of these comparative analyses is a report with the title "Analysis of the quality of public transport systems", that was summarized during the seminar in Gdansk (the entire report can be downloaded below). The latter has given a contribution to the discussion on solutions that can potentially be implemented in Pomerania, but also in neighbor- regions.

For the discussion panel, panelists were chosen among the most prominent experts on public transport. These people are not only scientifically involved in this subject, but they have been practitioners for years, associated with communication organizations.

At the end of the seminar, participants were required to fill in a questionnaire to fill out that will contribute to the draft of a special report.

Both the seminar and the pilot are financed under Interreg South Baltic Program , as part of Interconnect project .

The material from the seminar can be found below (pdf for download).

You can read more about the pilot here.