SYSTEMS CATERING TO RAILWAY PASSENGERS: ITALIAN RAILWAYS INITIATIVES

Italian Railways has been undergoing radical restructuring and reorganisation since July 1998. As part of this change, its Passenger Division has introduced several programmes, designed to meet passenger requirements in international trains and on the main domestic routes. SIPAX, a new passenger information technology (IT) system, will completely replace the current TPN system for seat reservations, ticketing, accounting, and other functions. The capacity is being expanded of FS-INFORMA, a national information system which manages telephone information to meet current and potential passenger requirements. SIPAX includes many functions in one operational system, and uses a two-level system architecture. Stations have been classified according to their sales volume and customer patronage, and are provided with corresponding SIPAX systems. SIPAX has developed software which can be handled by the European and world markets and is Y2K-compliant. The FS-INFORMA telephone information system was developed in the framework of the European Union ARIS (Automatic Railway Information Systems for Europe) project. It uses a voice recognition system with success rate about 93%, and transfers calls to operators if they are not recognised. Several further developments of FS-INFORMA are in progress.