Blockchain Technology… One of the biggest buzzwords, often overhyped and even more often just a fancy solution looking for a problem to solve. VMC.AI is fighting the odds and showing the world how blockchain technology can deliver a lot of value to public transport operators and its passengers.The Blockchain Bus pilot is the first phase of a big arrive project whereby buses, bikes, trams and trains will be connected to the VMC blockchain in an area — with over 1 million daily travellers — in the Netherlands.
Taking your first ride with VMC
You can pay for your bus ride using the VMC transport coin called VAI.It is good to know that the first rides are for free. As a promotion, Arriva is distributing VAI tokens for free to all first users via “airdrops” at various locations.
How the customer journey works:
This is very similar to the current modus operandi at Arriva (and many more public transport systems worldwide), because we built it with the user in mind as part of a value system. When we dive deeper into the system, we will discover the value it unlocks.
Value for passenger
Passengers would no longer have to worry about losing their travel chip cards. In addition to this, other key benefits of using VMC for any user include;
- Ease of charging your travel product — through buying tokens via your mobile device.
- Peer-to-peer token sharing with other users. Imagine you are travelling with someone who forgot to charge his/her travel product, you could easily help.
- Control over your own data — Choose to save a verified record of business trips or travel completely anonymous.
Value for Arriva
Arriva, as every public transport operator, attaches a lot of value to secure payment methods. Their current payment solution in the Netherlands (the OV chips card) has been very faulty in the past. Moreover, the solution does not make it convenient enough for people to fund their cards and travel. Arriva is looking for possible alternatives. Alternatives are often very pricy, too far away in the future or require large scale hardware and software adjustments. VMC does not impose these high barriers on Arriva, because its solution is plug-and-play (and the hardware is 8 times less costly). As a result, Arriva has initiated the project with VMC, starting with the Blockchain Bus Pilot of bus line 479.Benefits for Arriva include:
- Cheaper solution, due to the open source nature and standardized hardware
- Secure payment system
- Immutable timestamped record of transactions (rides) per bus at a given time
- Privacy compliance
- Solve the First Mile, Last Mile problem
- Compete with other MaaS providers
Next to a robust payment system, arguments for Privacy and MaaS sparked the commencement of this large scale project.As Joost Hakkaart (Marketing and PR Manager Arriva) stated:“We don’t want all the personal data from our passengers. All we want to know is how many people travelled on which route at what time, in order to improve our services, we don’t need to know who these people are”.With the current payment system, each transaction is inherently traceable to the person who made it. Even with anonymous OV chip cards.
Concluding with MaaS, Arriva stated that it is important for them to solve the first mile，last mile problem.It makes a lot of sense for Arriva to sync its existing services with other existing services in an open MaaS marketplace. Making it more convenient for people to use Arriva’s services. Moreover, it would allow Arriva to add more services to this platform. Leveraging on the network effects and eradicating the First Mile, Last Mile problem.
The future of human mobility
VMC advocates the right for people to move freely in cities and around globe. They aspire to address the flaws in the current mobility systems. Flaws we are getting used to, and therefore not seeing anymore.As Jochem Verheul (Founder/CEO) explained:“Even in San Fransisco, I saw the same problems I experienced everywhere in the world. I could not believe it…How can we be inside of all those offices creating amazing tech solutions and outside we’re still stuck in traffic? Wasting our time.”