On 2-3 April, ITxPT organized its Members Meeting in Geneva. During the two-day event, Members were offered to take part in the General Assembly, learn about the latest progress of the Association, listen to keynote speeches, exchange experiences and ideas during break-out sessions, hold discussions during a networking evening and participate in technical workshops. For the first time, ITxPT organized a stand-alone event and is pleased with the record attendance which amounted to around 100 Members.
The first day started with the General Assembly, during which ITxPT Secretary General, Anders Selling summarized year 2018 and received the formal approvals from the assembly to officially be able to close the previous year. Important 2018 achievements have been the progress of the ITxPT labeling activities, further initiatives and initiated tenders by authorities and operators as well as an almost 100% increase of the number of ITxPT Members. The Activity Report 2018 can be found in the ITxPT Documentation Centre here.
In the introduction of the Members Meeting, all new ITxPT Members and the latest ITxPT news were presented, which was followed by a presentation of the redesigned ITxPT website and an update of Documentation Center statistics. After the introduction, ITxPT gave the floor to the first keynote speaker Mr. Mario Werren, General Director of Lemanis, who shared the challenging development of the Léman Express network. The second keynote speech was held by Mrs. Anne Hornung-Soukup, President of the TPG Board of Directors, who gave an encouraging insight into TPG’s history and innovative approach to public transportation. The update on activities for developing the ITxPT Specifications, progress on labeled modules and vehicles as well as Working Groups was given by ITxPT Exploitation Manager, Emmanuel de Verdalle. All presentation material is accessible for registered users in the Documentation Center here.
The second part of the meeting consisted of the interactive break-out sessions whose aim was to discuss and collect the participants’ feedback from ITxPT implementations in the field and implementation projects. Key questions were experience from preparing or answering tenders, development of ITxPT-compliant modules, vehicles and back-offices, the ITxPT labeling and learnings from ITxPT in commercial offers. Before concluding the meeting, ITxPT together with TPG introduced activities planned for the following day.
On the second day, the two workshops for IBIS IP/ITxPT and ITxPT Working Group Coordination were held and in parallel the technical visit to the building site of the new TPG depot which will be in operation at the end of the year.
The workshops gave some important conclusions for how to proceed with the development of the ITxPT Specifications. To ITxPT and its members it is important to progress in the cooperation with IBIS-IP since these specifications can provide valuable input to the collaboration in the association. At the same time, without a coordination there is unnecessary double work creating inefficiencies among suppliers as well as customers especially in Germany. For the Working Groups, it was concluded that the organization is challenged by the rapid member growth and actions were discussed and defined to accelerate outputs to meet expectations in the market.
The ITxPT association is a collaborative community and the contributions from members in Members Meetings and Working Groups are the key resource in developing and delivering the ITxPT Specifications to the Public Transport industry. The next Members Meeting will be held in the fall and the invitation will be published soon. All the materials from the ITxPT Members Meeting in Geneva (agenda, presentations, pictures) can be found here.
