By Pekka Möttö, Kyyti Group CEO
- Planning your trip door to door from your home address to your destination in another city.
- Using multiple modes of transit operated by several operators.
- Using demand responsive transit in the first or last mile in rural areas.
- Booking and paying for the whole trip in one easy transaction.
Above mentioned is finally possible in Finland, since Matkahuolto has launched the Reitit ja Liput application. (Reitit ja Liput is Routes and Tickets in Finnish). This is possible for three reasons.
Most importantly, there is someone willing to provide the service to the end users. Matkahuolto is owned by the Finnish intercity bus operators and has been enabling nationwide intercity bus services since the industry was born in the early 1900’s. Therefore it is a logical entity to upgrade the public transit to include both local and intercity services. I cordially congratulate the company with such huge legacy for their willingness and capability to be the trailblazer in the changing transit market.
Secondly, there must be transit authorities and operators willing to have their services integrated to a wider service offering. In Finland the cities have opened their ticketing systems and made intercity travel chains possible in practise. Route planning has been available for a long time, but for the actual user experience it is crucially important to be able to buy the tickets from the same place in one seamless transaction where you buy other legs of your trip. Obviously, Matkahuolto’s own nationwide intercity bus network is in a central role. Helsinki recently joined, which in Finland is a big deal even though some smaller cities had been integrated earlier. There are also taxi operators already integrated in rural areas where the first and last mile are not solved with traditional public transit.
Thirdly, there must be technology in place to integrate multiple and multimodal mobility operators, provide multimodal route planning, power the demand responsive services and enable seamless and secure payments and ticketing for all mentioned above. This is what Kyyti Group has been working on and we are happy to be the technology provider for Matkahuolto. What I see in Matkahuolto’s Reitit ja Liput solution is MaaS (Mobility as a Service) finally put into action – on a nationwide level.
I am proud of my Kyyti team. Having a complicated thing look easy is a result of a huge amount of hard work. The core is the User Interface. End user’s problem is basically quite simple – going from A to B without hassle. The complexity of the transit system and several technologies needed to provide the door to door services are the challenge we have been solving.
Next generation OTP 2.x based flex route planner, platform capable of integrating multiple operators and mobility modes, ticketing and payment solutions and Demand Responsive Transit (DRT) solution adjusted to a highly complex business environment with multiple operators. That is in a nutshell the problem to be solved to actually come up with a solution that makes the end user’s life easier. I am happy that we have finally solved this in Finland and Kyyti Group has had the privilege to be in a central role together with the key players of the industry.