Providers of intermodal transport services in Baden-Württemberg were obliged to offer their passengers the new, state-wide BW tariff on the cut-off date of 9 December 2018. With the support of highQ, the Sigmaringen roundabout operators (KVB) were able to make a precision landing.

The new BW tariff, introduced on 9 December, is intended to make inter-city travel more comfortable and cheaper. With its 22 regional transport associations, Baden-Württemberg is an extremely challenging environment. For many, especially smaller transport providers, however, the additional tariff offer presented a challenge, as the tariff data supplied by the state had to be entered into all sales and control systems. This mainly affected rail transport providers such as DB Regio, but also national bus companies such as KVB Sigmaringen. The "Regiobus Donau-Bodensee" operated by the KVBs, a 48-kilometre bus line from Sigmaringen to Überlingen, connects the transport associations Neckar-Alb-Danube (Naldo) and Regionalverkehr Alb-Bodensee (RAB).

"All transport companies that operate across the association's boundaries had to complete the tariff integration by the deadline," explains Erik Schlegel, who is responsible for the project for highQ customers. "For our customer KVB Sigmaringen we were able to implement this very powerful and complex tariff on time despite the very tight time frame". This was highly appreciated by experts, who compared the BW tariff with a "new association" due to the effort involved. "Nevertheless, thanks to highQ's extensive experience in handling tariff data, the implementation was possible quickly and inexpensively", says highQ sales manager Kai Horn. The advantage here was that KVB already had modern, tablet-based sales and control systems with the highQ-TicketApp.

The new fare data is supplied by the state in the standardized PKM format (product and control module), the transport companies are then responsible for the integration themselves. Or they get support from experts like highQ. Erik Schlegel is therefore already in talks with other customers: "Those who do not offer intermodal transport services will have a slightly longer period of time to implement the BW tariff". In the course of the first half of 2019, highQ intends to offer an update of its TicketApp, which already includes the new tariff and will thus enable the sale and control of BW tickets for all users of the highQ app without additional effort. Next year, as soon as the country supplies the tariff data for e-tickets according to VDV-KA, highQ will also update its app mytraQ for mobile ticket control accordingly.