Reaching goals faster together

The joint tender brought numerous advantages for the three transport providers: only a single specification sheet had to be drawn up, and consulting fees were reduced. In addition, there were cost and time savings in the project because the three companies agreed early on to largely avoid individual custom solutions, which would have required significant additional development effort. Instead, they collectively opted for INIT’s proven standard. This decision
enables rapid implementation: The project was launched in October 2024, and the technical clarification of the concepts and the scope of the order was completed by the contract signing in May 2025. The project is scheduled for completion at the end of 2025 for Nahverkehr Hohenlohekreis, with Stadtwerke Heilbronn and Kreisverkehr Schwäbisch Hall to follow in 2026.

“The joint tender allowed us to create significant synergies. Especially today, it’s important that we don’t all go our separate ways, because we can achieve much more by working together on the basis of a common standard,” says Ingrid Kühnel, Managing Director of KreisVerkehr Schwäbisch Hall.

Like many other INIT customers, SWHN, KVSH and NVH will use INIT systems in the cloud. The three transport companies share the costs proportionally according to their size. Furthermore, thanks to hosting, investments in their
own server hardware and general IT effort can be saved – an advantage that is especially valuable in times of staff shortages. All INIT systems are provided as multi-tenant solutions, with each of the three transport companies receiving their own tenancy, allowing them to operate independently.

The systems will make day-to-day operations much easier. This includes, for example, fare management, which will be much simpler and require less manual effort with the new MOBILEvario ticketing system. This is an important aspect, as the fare system has to map six different fare zones as well as additional company-specific tariffs. Since Schwäbisch Hall and Hohenlohe already have to coordinate their fare management, it makes sense to rely on a single ticketing system. With MOBILEvario, Heilbronn, Hohenlohe and Schwäbisch Hall now have a system that is proven worldwide and is capable of meeting a wide range of requirements.

The same applies to MOBILE-ITCS nextGen, which in its standard version already meets the essential requirements for operations control. For Stadtwerke Heilbronn, the system will additionally be extended by a feature for tram prioritization. This is necessary because another transport company’s commuter trains enter the city area. In the future, Stadtwerke Heilbronn will be able to track the location of these trains in its ITCS and use the new feature to give them priority over its own buses on shared route sections. To achieve this, an interface to the rail operator’s ITCS will be established. In their vehicles, the three transport companies rely on the combined INIT on-board computer and ticket printer: a total of 500 EVENDpc devices will support all required ITCS and ticketing functions.

Priority at traffic lights is a key factor for punctual public transport. For this reason, Stadtwerke Heilbronn chose a cutting-edge solution for traffic signal priority (TSP) based on the C-ITS guidelines. C-ITS stands for cooperative
intelligent transport systems, where vehicles and transport infrastructure exchange digital radio messages. To enable buses to send digital messages to traffic signals, the PTX interface (PTX = public transport to everything) is used
between the on-board computers and a V2X onboard unit. This allows Stadtwerke Heilbronn to control traffic signals without having to rely on analog radio.

MOBILE-PLAN is used for data supply at KreisVerkehr Schwäbisch Hall and Nahverkehr Hohenlohekreis to import network and timetable data from upstream planning systems. In Heilbronn, MOBILE-PLAN is used as a fully-fledged planning system.

The transport companies in Heilbronn, Schwäbisch Hall and Hohenlohekreis demonstrate how digitalization can be implemented efficiently: through joint tendering, the broad avoidance of individual custom solutions and the use of proven INIT standards. Everyone benefits from lower costs, less effort and faster project completion. The cloud solutions also ensure future-proofing.