Data standards for system interoperability and people mobility

Abstract

“Mobility", "interoperability", and "inter-modality" are concepts expressing both objectives of services and characteristics of systems. How interoperable and intermodal systems influence personal mobility is intuitive and often discussed. In public transport, interoperability between fare systems, for instance, is an important step towards “seamless travel” by allowing users to access public transport in different areas with one single medium (“ticket”), while interoperability between trip planning systems allows for user-friendly passenger information and thus provides a necessary condition to ease the mobility of people. Truly interoperable systems follow a holistic approach in respect of transport, and provide the combination of different modes/means of transport within the same journey. CEN Technical Committee 278 WG3 developed a particularly useful standard for data structures (Transmodel) which acts as a reference for other standards, and hence facilitates the definition of the necessary requirements to make EU-wide multimodal travel information services accurate and available to all.