Building a European multimodal transport system starts with interoperable backend services

While trains, planes and autonomous automobiles tend to dominate the multimodal transport discussion, it’s what happens behind the scenes that really matters. Without the right backend services and tools, a multimodal transportation system simply will not run. It’s the real-time information platforms, booking applications, secure payment systems, and user interfaces that turn the different steps and many modes involved into a single, streamlined journey.

Projects under the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking (JU) developed a set of new tools and services that not only empower the traveller to manage a seamless, door-to-door multimodal journey but also put rail at the centre of the multimodal ecosystem.

Above and beyond

Although not every tool and service developed by the JU are completely new, they all go well beyond the capabilities of any existing solution. The secret? The adoption of a robust functional architecture and the introduction of generic transport ontologies.

This approach guarantees technical interoperability between all multimodal services, where an open-ended world of annotated data, services, events, and resources can be published, searched, and accessed by business application. It also opens the door to using one generic framework to cover all modes of transport (including aviation, car sharing, on-demand, and maritime), any type of contractual arrangement (e.g. inter-modal and multimodal), and all ticketing and validation schemes. The end result is a guaranteed scalable and robust multi-vendor services platform that enables a real multi-modal transport ecosystem.

Specifically, the JU:

1. Identified and developed the services needed to create a seamless travel experience across all (public) transport modes.
2. Made such services available through an easy-to-use Travel Companion.
3. Provided transport service providers (TSPs) easy access to a comprehensive, open, and passenger-centric ecosystem of multimodal tools.

All the developed services and solutions using semantic IT for this R&I environment were designed to be interoperable, cover all transport modes, and be compatible with existing legacy solutions.

Backend building blocks

• Facilitate interoperability: because transport stakeholders don’t always speak the same language, all multimodal services and solutions should be ‘multilingual’ (i.e. flexible enough to fit into different users’ existing processes and procedures).
• Enable multimodal offers: the complexity of networks, modes of operation and different business rules make it difficult to calculate a combined offer. Instead, multimodal services should focus on creating simplified single offers, coupled offers, or mobility packages.
• Easy management: a multimodal traveller needs to be able to easily manage bookings, access tickets, and make payments from and to a variety of different entities.
• Streamlined travel information: all information related to a single, multimodal journey must be combined to give the passenger ownership of their travel and data and to ensure they have the best information tailored to their individual preferences.
• A single user interface: all relevant information and services should be available in a single, intuitive platform that can be readily accessed on the go, via a mobile app, website, or other digital device.

A portfolio of backend services

Although the end goal is to create a single, market-ready global solution, the initiative opted to start small, building the envisioned multimodal backend brick by brick. These bricks included:

• Interoperability framework: allows for more efficient interconnection between heterogeneous systems.
• Travel shopping: a single marketplace that brings together all retail operations relevant to the multimodal journey.
• Booking and ticketing: unifies how the rights to travel (i.e. entitlements) are specified and used across all modes of transport.
• Trip tracking: notifies passengers about any foreseen difficulties in their journey and offers alternative solutions and/or re-booking options.
• Travel companion: simplifies all the information relating to a multimodal journey to create a seamless user experience.
• Business analytics: provides a common business intelligence foundation to generate and monitor data from across the transport ecosystem.

Each of these individual services in this R&I environment were developed in a stepwise approach, starting with simple use cases and progressively being enhanced for use with more complex scenarios.

Ensuring the interoperability of legacy and new solutions

The diversity of use cases and transport segments requires a new approach related to ‘standards’. After all, a new, multimodal ecosystem must be open to multiple business models and introduce more interoperability to fully support existing models – all while encouraging innovation. This simply will not happen if specific standards are imposed on existing solutions. Instead, what is needed is a framework based on transport ontologies and semantic IT web technologies capable of automating the conversion across different data representations of similar transport concepts.

Within such a framework, common knowledge is formally described via machine-readable ontologies. Specific representations are further annotated with the terms of the ontologies, thus associating the data structures to their interpretation. This format ensures the interoperability of legacy and new solutions, even when using different data structures or communication protocols.

A consolidated Travel Companion

Following extensive development and testing, many of the above-listed multimodal services were integrated into the Travel Companion. This innovative solution is designed to combine various modes of transport (public transport, rail, carsharing, demand-responsive transport, micromobility, etc.) from different cities and even countries into a single platform where users can plan, pay, implement, and follow their travels in an easy and convenient manner.

While the initial version of the Travel Companion was restricted to co-modal travel (i.e. different tickets issued for different legs of the journey), a second release added such new functionalities as group travelling. It also included tools TSPs can use to add their own offer(s) to the multimodal ecosystem. The final release featured enhanced performance, with faster response times and more flexibility so a user can tailor the Travel Companion to their own personal preferences. It also introduced mobility packages and soft modes and integrated ride-sharing and other demand-responsive transport options.

Lessons learned

Both the individual services and the consolidated Travel Companion were extensively piloted across Europe, including in Portugal, Spain, Germany, Czech Republic, Greece, Finland, Italy, Poland and Croatia.

Some of the key takeaways from these pilots were:

• Although the approach proved to be versatile, the introduction of data from each TSP took too much time. Instead, a specific portal for TSP registration was developed.
• While the initial performance of the interoperability framework was insufficient (the result of excessive latency in the Travel Companion’s response), this has been greatly improved in the latest release.

These results, and others, have been widely shared with the transport sector, decision-makers, and other stakeholders. Technical details about the platform’s architecture, along with detailed descriptions of the use cases, have been consolidated into an open-source solution and made available here.

Challenges and solutions

In addition to confirming the potential for building a European-wide multimodal system, the pilots also identified some of the main challenges to building such a system. These include:

• Lack of a European regulatory framework(s) to support the deployment of multimodal services at scale and across Member States.
• Need to find optimal way(s) to support the additional costs associated with implementing the proposed solutions.
• National regulations require clear definition of the roles shared by public bodies, transport operators, and service platform providers.

Despite any challenges ahead, with the proposed services and solutions in hand, infrastructure managers, railway operators, suppliers, and final users are now better positioned than ever to move towards making a European-wide multimodal system a reality.