Local Transport Days 2017
Digitalisation, local transport and future travel
Marten Pfannenschmidt from Freie Universität Berlin is the winner of this year's Local Transport Days Best Paper Award. He managed to impress the jury with his presentation on the subject of "Analysis of transaction data in online ticketing on the basis of data mining methods". The innovative approach and strong focus on practical application convinced the jury as well as the event participants, who evaluated the presentation during the event with an online tool. The overall score was made up of the individual evaluations of the short version (20%), the long version (40%) and the verbal presentation (40%). Marten Pfannenschmidt's efforts were rewarded with a cheque for 1,500 euros. "The Best Paper Award offers young researchers the chance to present and discuss their ideas in front of and with a large trade audience," explains Professor Carsten Sommer from the University of Kassel, who was responsible for organising the science-side of this trade-specific event.
The Local Transport Days offer a forum where new scientific findings, interesting ideas and concepts as well as successful examples in the area of data recording, data utilisation and data-supported methods and applications in public transport are discussed. The digitalisation will not only lead to new transport services but also result in a huge number of automatically recorded data generated by the operation of and demand for transport services. "Transport companies can collect new data and use new methods to design their offers in a more customer-focused way. This benefits above all the customers," Professor Summer says, summarising the issue.
Numerous concepts, ideas and projects where presented and discussed at the trade conference. This year's event again attracted a lot of interest: With around 190 participants, the event was fully booked. "We offer national transport experts a platform for catching up with the latest developments, talking to each other and learning more about new transport concepts," explains Dr Thorsten Ebert from the KVG management board. Wolfgang Rausch, the NVV CEO, agrees with him: "We learnt more about some groundbreaking projects over the past few days and were able to get lots of inspiration for northern Hesse." Regional manager Holger Schach emphasises how important it is to talk to national experts: "In order to be able to develop innovative projects for the region, it is important that we identify the latest trends and potentials; trade events such as the Local Transport Days are of course extremely helpful in this respect."
