Calypso® Light Ticket: First commercial application in Paris
nagels sets another important milestone in the expansion of its international market presence in the field of intelligent ticketing solutions: As a supplier of Calypso® Light tickets for Île de France Mobilité (IDFM), nagels is one of the first companies to offer this ticket in a commercial environment. After a long test phase, the first tickets with this brand new technology are now being used in practice under real conditions.
Île de France Mobilité: A transport network for 15 million people
IDFM is responsible for transportation in Paris and the 1233 surrounding cities with a total of 15 million inhabitants. This demonstrates nagels' strong position in the field of smart ticketing for public transport. The implementation phase, known as "the run", began in the final days of 2022 and is the first step towards live use of the tickets.
The contract awarded to nagels is part of the Mass Transit Modernization Program launched in 2016. Around 1,000 stations, including sales points, turnstiles and ticket machines, 10,000 buses, streetcars, subway trains, ticket validators, etc. will be renovated, retrofitted or renewed and new lines will be opened. The total investment is expected to amount to over two billion euros per year by 2024.
"We are very proud to be part of this exciting project, which is the world's first real implementation of this new technology. This contract is a tangible recognition of nagels' expertise in the global mass transit market and in the Calypso sector in particular," says Insa Nagels, Managing Director.
New era in ticketing: SOCS replace magnetic individual tickets
The IDFM is calling on all local authorities to upgrade their systems to the Calypso standard, which is currently one of the most secure solutions for ticketing with RFID. The previously used magnetic single-use tickets - known to all Parisians as "ticket t" - will be replaced by rechargeable and reusable flexible paper tickets called SOCS (Supports Occasionnel Calypso Souple). These new media, all loaded with the new Calypso Light® standard application, will be dispensed from the thousands of ticket vending machines installed in the Paris region. The target audience for this new ticketing solution is the general public and occasional users. All tickets are produced in Germany at the nagels headquarters in Kempen.
