The ID-Ticket Concept

An ID-ticket (virtual ticket) gives the user a personal right to use services sold via an electronic payment collection system when he/she proves his/her identity with an identification document (ID-card). In Tallinn, the virtual ticket can be purchased from different distribution channels such as fixed phone, mobile phone, Internet, direct debit, and cash (kiosks, shops, post offices, etc). Customers no longer have physical tickets in their pockets; they prove their right to services with the electronic ID-card.

On 1 March 2004, Tallinn introduced an electronic ID-card ticketing system. Almost 100,000 valid ID tickets were registered on 20 March 2005. There are approximately 115 000 recorded users of Tallinn public transport, plus a further 10%, who are not required to buy a ticket (children under seven and adults over 65).

Why an electronic ID card?
The ID-card system was chosen for several reasons. The main reason was a need for personalized tickets and almost two thirds of the population of Estonia holds an ID-card, which also has the necessary chip. This means that the costs of the system are low. ID-cards enable automated checks from the population registry to be made using the personal ID-code and facilitates the selling and checking of tickets on-line.

How it works
The main process of the ID-ticket system is purchasing a ticket - a user gives the operator rights to process user's personal ID-code. And inspection of the ticket - during inspection the client presents his/her ID-card - the personal identification code is automatically read from it with the inspector's device. Ticket validation and status checks are based on simple (Offline, USSD, WWW, GPRS) solutions.

Advantages of the ID ticket system
The system is fully online, user friendly and flexible and allows online statistics to be generated, turning the ticketing system into a flexible tool for planning transportation policy. This system allows personalized, price-differentiated tickets to be easily produced. Another benefit is that distribution costs are reduced, because printing and delivering paper tickets is no longer necessary. After one year of operation, the statistics show that purchasing ID-tickets by electronic channels is very popular.

The ID-Ticket project gained an annual award "Aasta Tegu" ("Maker of the Year") from the Association of Estonian Information Technology and Telecommunications Companies.