AI is being used increasingly across public transport, and the possibilities seem almost endless. At Samtrafiken, the customer support team has developed a model that makes even some of the most tedious tasks more enjoyable. Östgötatrafiken is exploring several in-house AI applications, while at EU level, discussions are under way on how digitalisation could fundamentally transform public procurement. You can hear more about all of this at Persontrafik.
Samtrafiken’s customer support team sometimes receives particularly complex cases involving compensation for delays. Until recently, resolving these cases could take a long time and involve extensive searches through legal texts. Then came “Compensation Elsa” – an advanced GPT-based AI model developed in-house by Samtrafiken and trained on legislation and complex cases. Elsa can handle even the most difficult cases quickly and provide structured responses that would otherwise take customer support staff a considerable amount of time to produce.
And she is curious, cheerful and enthusiastic.
We’ve given Elsa a personality that makes her consistently encouraging. It has made these cases much more enjoyable to work on. We’re now looking at how we can integrate AI into other areas of customer support as well. Next up is an AI-powered chat function on our website, says team leader Cecilia Strömberg.
Samtrafiken also has an AI-inspired “book club” that meets once a month – not to read books, but to test AI in different applications and share experiences.
We’re always coming up with new ideas to try out, which we discuss and evaluate when we meet. It has been very well received and has increased both interest in and enthusiasm for finding new ways to use AI.
Cecilia Strömberg will be speaking at Persontrafik alongside Carin Carelind, IT Director at Östgötatrafiken. In collaboration with AI Sweden, the national centre for applied AI, Östgötatrafiken has carried out several internal AI maturity assessments since 2022. The first assessment showed that many employees had only a limited understanding of what AI actually was. Today, however, many use AI tools in their daily work, and the organisation continues to explore new applications. One current project is looking at the use of AI in special transport services.
We want to see whether AI can help us improve our ability to predict how many special transport vehicles we need on the road each day. However, we believe the greatest benefits of AI will come in mainstream public transport, where we have vast amounts of data. We’ll be focusing on this in the autumn, and we’ve also implemented customer service systems with built-in AI capabilities,” says Carin Carelind, adding that she will have many more exciting projects to share at Persontrafik.
AI can also deliver significant improvements in operational efficiency.
Persontrafik will also welcome Ellen Hausel Heldahl, a lawyer and public procurement expert at the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise. She recently served as an expert in the European Commission’s work on revising the EU public procurement directives. One of the areas she is particularly focused on – and will discuss at Persontrafik – is the digitalisation of public procurement. This could lead to cost savings, better contract compliance and improved opportunities to combat crime and corruption.
The more information and verifiable procurement and contract data we collect, the more AI-based services we can develop. Public authorities need to understand the market. For example, when procuring bus services, they need to know what is happening in areas such as electrification. Access to reliable data enables organisations to make informed decisions rather than relying on assumptions, while also helping to identify unscrupulous suppliers and improve both transparency and outcomes, explains Ellen Hausel Heldahl.
In the longer term, she believes AI will transform most procurement documents and could even respond to many tenders.
People will still have an important role to play somewhere in the process. But first, the EU needs to establish standards that allow data to be transferred seamlessly between different systems. That may take some time, says Ellen Hausel Heldahl.
Text: Paula Isaksson
At Persontrafik Cecilia Strömberg from Samtrafiken and Carin Carelind from Östgötatrafiken will speak at the Persontrafik conference in the seminar “AI i kollektivtrafiken – från planering till kundmöte.”
At Persontrafik Ellen Hausel Heldahl from Svenskt Näringsliv will speak at the Persontrafik conference in the seminar “En digital inköpsprocess och AI.”