Stockholm Transport: Choosing the Right Ticketing System
Sweden’s public transport system faced a high-stakes decision: whether to build a new nationwide ticketing system in-house or purchase an off-the-shelf vendor solution. With decades of impact at stake, TransparentChoice enabled stakeholders to cut through complexity, align around facts, and reach a clear decision quickly.
The Challenge
The transport authority needed to replace its ticketing system — a project that would take years to deliver and remain in place for decades. Choosing the wrong approach could have long-term financial and operational consequences.
Decision-making was made harder by strong preconceptions among stakeholders. Lawyers, technicians, commercial teams, and policy leaders all came to the table with entrenched positions, making it difficult to align. The existing evaluation method was manual, requiring researchers to build tables, slowing the process and limiting transparency.
Our Approach
The client adopted TransparentChoice, replacing spreadsheets and manual research with real-time decision support. The structured framework forced diverse groups to listen to each other’s arguments, ensuring that technical, legal, and commercial perspectives were all heard.
By focusing debate on weighted criteria rather than opinions, stakeholders avoided “nice-to-have” distractions and concentrated on what mattered most. TransparentChoice’s clarity and interactive outputs helped transform discussions into evidence-based decisions.
The Results
The group reached consensus to build the new system mainly in-house and moved rapidly into recruitment to accelerate delivery. Stakeholders reported that “listening to each other helped a lot,” with TransparentChoice described as key in “making complicated issues more clear.”
The new system launched in February 2021 and is scheduled to fully replace the legacy system by 2023. By aligning decision-makers early, the authority avoided costly delays, improved confidence, and ensured a solution built to last.
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