Brussels, 16/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission hopes that multi-modal, pan-European journey planners will be developed in the EU28, explained Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas at an international intelligent transport conference in Helsinki on 16 June.
At this tenth international intelligent transport conference, the commissioner outlined the problems facing such a development and unveiled a roadmap for getting round them. Hundreds of satnavs and journey planners already exist but they only cater for small geographical areas or a single form of transport and nobody is planning effective journey-planners to cover the whole of Europe and all modes of transport.
Barriers. A study carried out by the European Commission highlighted a number of barriers. Little high-quality information is available, be it in terms of route or traffic, and what information is available is not necessarily compatible Europe-wide. There is insufficient cooperation among stakeholders - transport operators, developers and the member states.
Work at the European Commission. The European Commission is not planning to develop this type of planning tool itself, but it will be encouraging the removal of barriers. Innovative small companies need access to data so that they can develop genuine door-to-door journey planners, explained Kallas in Helsinki, calling for better cooperation among stakeholders. The Commission is organising cooperation and currently running other initiatives to improve the situation. An impact assessment will be carried out later this year and technical specifications will be decided upon over the next few months. Beyond 2014, work will be carried out in this domain under the Horizon 2020 research programme and the Connecting Europe Facility.
Benefits. The roadmap says that pan-European multimodal journey-planning tools will improve information for travellers even when they are on their journeys, and will help make transport less environmentally damaging. Travellers will be able to compare and contrast modes of transport to find the cheapest and greenest, and will also be able to find alternative routes to get round bottlenecks and thus reduce their carbon footprint. (MD)