Smooth, reliable mobility of people with very different needs (accessibility, inter-modality, timeliness, etc.) is the goal of modern systems and this concept is often called “Mobility as a Service” (Maas). Many parameters play a role to produce such trip plans: good cooperation between actors (public/private organisations); provision of efficient software components and good communication between them; availability and collection of basic data and its reliability; contractual aspects between actors; etc.
To reach this goal, in particular at the level of Europe, system interoperability is the keyword and a real challenge as trip planning algorithms have to process interlinked data coming from different sources and combine them to (often multimodal and/or cross border) trip plans.
In order to facilitate this task, the Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/1926 requires data publication of key data categories for the Multimodal Travel Information using specific standards. According to the Regulation and as regards public transport, information shall be made available through the National Access Points using NeTEx (TS16614) the standard relying on the Reference Data Model called Transmodel (EN12896).
Transmodel has been developed for the conventional transport (bus, coach, metro, tram, rail, some aspects of air transport). There is a need for reference data models to accommodate emerging modes of transport to allow seamless transitions for the traveller between all available modes. Examples of these alternative modes are car and cycle sharing, car-pooling, and intelligent parking (Park & Ride).
The goal of the project team PT1711 is a CEN Technical Specification which defines a reference data model for alternative transport modes, i.e. data structures which allow for identifying this data without ambiguity, structuring it in order to be able to exchange it or make it available to others, e;g through the National Access Points.
To allow an easy integration of these modes into urban multimodal services (e.g. trip planning systems) is an important requirement facilitated through the fact that the alternative modes data structures are incorporated into the Transmodel ecosystem.
