Case Study - Cubic Transportation Systems/Heathrow Express

Situation

Cubic Transportation Systems, (CTS) is the world's largest supplier of integrated ticketing and automated fare collection systems for mass transit, including stored-value cards, magnetic ticketing and smart card technology for rail, bus, subway, toll and parking. Heathrow Express, Cubic's client, provides the London Heathrow to Paddington train service in the United Kingdom.

Heathrow Express needed a new ticketing system part of which included handheld mobile terminals for selling tickets on trains and at stations. Cubic Transportation Systems required additional Windows CE expertise to rapidly develop handheld terminals compatible with its existing ticketing systems.
Solution Overview

Companies
Cubic Transportation Systems
Heathrow Express

Business Situation
Heathrow Express train company wanted a handheld terminal to issue tickets.

Solution
Casio IT-70 and EG-800 Rugged Pocket PC, Bluetooth, Zebra card swipe/printer.

Benefits
Quick Ticket issue.
Rapid development.
Integration into existing fare collection systems.

Software
Embedded Visual C++.
Rational Rose.

Vertical Industries
Transportation

Country/Region
United Kingdom

 

Solution

I was technical lead of an on-site team, including Cubic staff, developing a handheld ticketing terminal based on the ruggedised Casio IT-70 Pocket PC. Ticket printing and credit card swipes are performed using a Zebra magnetic cardswipe printer. The Pocket PC and Zebra printer communicate via bluetooth. Later variants were based on the colour Casio EG-800.


Ticketing Screen

Benefits

I was chosen for my expertise in Windows CE which resulted in reduced development time and risk. I was able to integrate with existing Cubic Pocket PC code allowing further reduced development time whilst maintaining compatibility with existing Cubic software and systems.