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A journey planner, trip planner, or route planner is a specialized
search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
used to find an optimal means of travelling between two or more given locations, sometimes using more than one
transport mode Mode of transport is a term used to distinguish between different ways of transportation or transporting people or goods. The different modes of transport are air, water, and land transport, which includes rails or railways, road and off-road t ...
. Searches may be optimized on different criteria, for example ''fastest'', ''shortest'', ''fewest changes'', ''cheapest''. They may be constrained, for example, to leave or arrive at a certain time, to avoid certain waypoints, etc. A single journey may use a sequence of several
modes of transport Mode of transport is a term used to distinguish between different ways of transportation or transporting people or goods. The different modes of transport are air, water, and land transport, which includes rails or railways, road and off-road tr ...
, meaning the system may know about
public transport Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typical ...
services as well as
transport network A transport network, or transportation network, is a network or graph in geographic space, describing an infrastructure that permits and constrains movement or flow. Examples include but are not limited to road networks, railways, air routes, ...
s for private transportation. Trip planning or journey planning is sometimes distinguished from ''route planning'', which is typically thought of as using private modes of transportation such as
cycling Cycling, also, when on a two-wheeled bicycle, called bicycling or biking, is the use of cycles for transport, recreation, exercise or sport. People engaged in cycling are referred to as "cyclists", "bicyclists", or "bikers". Apart from two ...
,
driving Driving is the controlled operation and movement of a vehicle, including cars, motorcycles, trucks, buses, and bicycles. Permission to drive on public highways is granted based on a set of conditions being met and drivers are required to fol ...
, or
walking Walking (also known as ambulation) is one of the main gaits of terrestrial locomotion among legged animals. Walking is typically slower than running and other gaits. Walking is defined by an 'inverted pendulum' gait in which the body vaults o ...
, normally using a single mode at a time. Trip or journey planning, in contrast, would make use of at least one
public transport Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typical ...
mode which operates according to published schedules; given that public transport services only depart at specific times (unlike private transport which may leave at any time), an algorithm must therefore not only find a path to a destination, but seek to optimize it so as to minimize the waiting time incurred for each leg. In European Standards such as
Transmodel Transmodel (formally ''CEN TC278, Reference Data Model For Public Transport, EN12896'') is the CEN European Reference Data Model for Public Transport Information; it provides a conceptual model of common public transport concepts and data structur ...
, trip planning is used specifically to describe the planning of a route for a passenger, to avoid confusion with the completely separate process of planning the operational journeys to be made by public transport vehicles on which such trips are made. Trip planners have been widely used in the
travel industry Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism mo ...
since the 1970s, by booking agents. The growth of the
internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
, the proliferation of
geospatial data Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position). It is also call ...
, and the development of
information technologies Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...
generally has led to the rapid development of many self-service app or
browser-based A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...
, on-line intermodal trip planners. A trip planner may be used in conjunction with ticketing and reservation systems.


Basic features

Journey planners, also known as trip planners, comprise a front end user interface to gather travel requirements from the user and present the proposed travel itineraries back to them, and a back end journey planning engine which performs the actual computation of the possible trip plans, prioritizing these according to the user's optimization criteria (''fastest, fewest changes, cheapest'', etc.) and returning a subset that best satisfy them. The user interface may run on a terminal, PC, tablet, mobile device or even be speech based and may integrate maps and location data to give a visualization of the trip or to simplify the interaction with the user. The journey planning engine may be either local or remote and may have either a monolithic (all the data in a single search space) or a distributed architecture (the data for different regions split among different engines, each with their own search space). Simple engines cover only public transport data for a single mode, others are multimodal, covering public transport data for several modes; advanced intermodal engines may also include road and footpath routing to cover the access legs to reach the public transport stops and also simultaneously compute routes for travel by private car so that the user may make a comparison between public and private modes. Advanced trip planners may also make use of real-time data to improve their results; this use may be decorative, annotating the results with information about known incidents that might affect the trip, or computational, dynamically using the predicted departure and arrival times from a real-time feed such as the CEN
Service Interface for Real Time Information The Standard Interface for Real-time Information or SIRI is an XML protocol to allow distributed computers to exchange real-time information about public transport services and vehicles. The protocol is a CEN norm, developed originally as a tec ...
to give more accurate trip plans for trips taking place in the near future. The capabilities of the back-end engine limit what may be offered in the user interface. The available data limits the capabilities of the back-end engine.


Inputs

The minimum inputs to a trip planner are an origin and destination place and a date and time of travel (which can be defaulted to the current moment). The interface may provide various methods to discover and specify an origin or destination, including specifying the name of a geocoded place, a stop or station code, a
street address An address is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used to give the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally using political boundaries and street names as references, along ...
, a point of interest (that is, a tourist attraction or other named common destination) or a
spatial coordinate In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space. The order of the coordinates is sign ...
(usually specified by using an interactive web map - current locations can also be obtained from a
GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...
location service or from an IP address lookup). A location finding function of the trip planner will typically first resolve the origin and destination into the nearest known nodes on the transport network in order to compute a trip plan over its data set of known public transport journeys. Depending on the journey planning engine and the data sets which are available to it, many other additional inputs may be supported, for example: * Which
transport modes Mode of transport is a term used to distinguish between different ways of transportation or transporting people or goods. The different modes of transport are air, water, and land transport, which includes rails or railways, road and off-road t ...
to include or exclude. * Whether to constrain the time of travel by arrival time, departure time - or to allow a flexible window within which travel may be undertaken. * Trip detour preferences for any preferred routing for the trip via intermediate stop points. * Trip optimization preferences: for example ''the shortest trip'' versus ''the fewest changes''. * Trip cost optimization preferences: for example, ''the cheapest'' versus ''the most convenient''. * Accessibility preferences: ''step-free, wheelchair accessible'', etc., and whether to allow extra time for connections. * Access preferences: how long the user is prepared to walk to a stop, etc. * Class of travel and desired on-board facilities. * Congestion preferences : ''least crowded'' versus ''shortest trip '', etc. * Information relevant for selecting fares and the cheapest option: the type of user (''adult, child, senior, student,'' etc.), ownership of travel cards, etc. * Justification of the trip: for example ''a family getaway'' versus ''a business trip''. * etc.


Outputs

After the trip planner has computed and prioritized a trip or set of possible trips, these are presented to the user as a list for the user to choose from, they may also or instead be displayed on a map. Again, depending on the capabilities of the planner and the available data, the results may include; * The times and departure points of trips from stops or stations, possibly with the exact platform to use and even the boarding point on the platform. * Trip maps showing the path of the trip legs on a map. * Route maps showing the network topology. * Stop area maps and other directions to identify the location of the stops at the boarding and alighting points. * Information about the heading signs shown on the vehicle in order to identify the correct transport vehicle to take. * Information on the transfer times needed to make the access and connection legs. * Step by step directions in order to follow an access leg to a stop, enter a station or large interchange such as an airport, or make a transfer on a connection leg, including the accessibility characteristics of each step. * Information on the accessibility characteristics of the vehicles on specific legs (''wheelchair hoist, wheelchair spaces'', etc.). * Information on the at-stop and on-board facilities (''parking, buffet car, wifi,'' etc.). * Information on disruption or delays expected on specific trip legs or modes. * Information on available fares for the trip.


Additional features

Some trip planners integrate information services other than point-to-poin
trip planning
into their user interface, for example to provide timetables for routes, real-time arrivals and departures at stops, or real-time disruption notices. Additional visualizations may be offered; Google, for example, has a
Gantt chart A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule, named after its popularizer, Henry Gantt (1861–1919), who designed such a chart around the years 1910–1915. Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationship ...
like 'Schedule explorer' that can be used to visualize the relative timings of different trip plans. Another powerful visualization is the
Isochrone map An isochrone map in geography and urban planning is a map that depicts the area accessible from a point within a certain time threshold. An isochrone (iso = equal, chrone = time) is defined as "a line drawn on a map connecting points at which som ...
which shows relative travel times as relative distances. A trip planner may also have more than one
user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...
, with each optimized for different purposes. For example, online self-service done with a
Web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...
, an interface for
call center A call centre ( Commonwealth spelling) or call center (American spelling; see spelling differences) is a managed capability that can be centralised or remote that is used for receiving or transmitting a large volume of enquiries by telephone. ...
agents, one for use on mobile devices, or special interfaces for visually impaired users. Some commercial trip planners include aspects of
discovery shopping Discovery shopping (also known as discovery shopping search) is a type of online shopping that emphasizes the browsing aspects of the shopping experience. Discovery shopping search offers shoppers guided queries for more personalized results. The g ...
for accommodation and activities and
price comparison Pricing is the process whereby a business sets the price at which it will sell its products and services, and may be part of the business's marketing plan. In setting prices, the business will take into account the price at which it could acqui ...
for some aspects of a trip.


History


Antecedents

Paper based timetables designed for manual trip planning on public transport were developed in the 19th century, most notably by
George Bradshaw George Bradshaw (29 July 1800 – 6 September 1853) was an English cartographer, printer and publisher. He developed Bradshaw's Guide, a widely sold series of combined railway guides and timetables. Biography Bradshaw was born at Windsor Brid ...
who published the
Bradshaw's Guide ''Bradshaw's'' was a series of railway Public transport timetable, timetables and travel guide books published by W.J. Adams and later Henry Blacklock, both of London. They are named after founder George Bradshaw, who produced his first timet ...
, the world's first compilation of railway timetables in 1839. This became the definitive guide to UK railway routes and timetables, aggregating the data from the different railway companies into a common format. This served to establish both a standardized data set of stops and services, a workflow for regularly gathering data from many different providers and updating the data set, and a market for travel information products. Equivalent publications were developed for other countries. A theoretical basis for computer-based trip planning was provided in 1956 by Edsger W.
Dijkstra's algorithm Dijkstra's algorithm ( ) is an algorithm for finding the shortest paths between nodes in a graph, which may represent, for example, road networks. It was conceived by computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra in 1956 and published three years ...
for finding the shortest paths between
nodes In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a Vertex (graph theory), vertex). Node may refer to: In mathematics *Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph *Vertex (geometry), a point where two ...
in a
graph Graph may refer to: Mathematics *Graph (discrete mathematics), a structure made of vertices and edges **Graph theory, the study of such graphs and their properties *Graph (topology), a topological space resembling a graph in the sense of discre ...
.
Graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conne ...
itself originates from
Euler Leonhard Euler ( , ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in ma ...
's consideration of a route planning problem - the
Seven Bridges of Königsberg The Seven Bridges of Königsberg is a historically notable problem in mathematics. Its negative resolution by Leonhard Euler in 1736 laid the foundations of graph theory and prefigured the idea of topology. The city of Königsberg in Prussia (n ...
.


Precursor systems

In the 1970s and 1980s, national railway operators such as
British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...
,
Deutsche Bahn The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder. describes itself as the se ...
and major metropolitan transit authorities London Transport developed internal systems to manage data for printed timetables and to support operations. National rail operators also developed reservation systems which typically have the ability for ticket offices and retailers to find the trip available between an origin and a destination in order to book a ticket. A separate development of electronic trip planning capabilities occurred in aviation, starting somewhat earlier as part of the evolution of airline reservation systems concerned with managing airline seating inventory in real-time. The earliest of these systems
Sabre A sabre ( French: sabʁ or saber in American English) is a type of backsword with a curved blade associated with the light cavalry of the early modern and Napoleonic periods. Originally associated with Central European cavalry such as th ...
was launched in 1960 by
American Airlines American Airlines is a major airlines of the United States, major US-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the Largest airlines in the world, largest airline in the world when measured ...
, others included Apollo (
United Airlines United Airlines, Inc. (commonly referred to as United), is a major American airline headquartered at the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois.
(1972) and the rival
Galileo CRS Galileo is a computer reservations system (CRS) owned by Travelport. As of 2000, it had a 26.4% share of worldwide CRS airline bookings. In addition to airline reservations, the Galileo CRS is also used to book train travel, cruises, car rental, ...
and
Amadeus Amadeus may refer to: *Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), prolific and influential composer of classical music *Amadeus (name), a given name and people with the name * ''Amadeus'' (play), 1979 stage play by Peter Shaffer * ''Amadeus'' (film), ...
systems created by different European airline consortia in 1987. All were mainframe-based with remote
OLTP In online transaction processing (OLTP), information systems typically facilitate and manage transaction-oriented applications. This is contrasted with online analytical processing. The term "transaction" can have two different meanings, both of wh ...
terminals and became widely used by travel agents to find air, rail and boat journeys.


First-generation systems

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some national railway operators and major metropolitan transit authorities developed their own specialized trip planners to support their customer enquiry services. These typically ran on
mainframes A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...
and were accessed internally with terminals by their own staff in customer information centers, call centers, and at ticket counters in order to answer customer queries. The data came from the timetable databases used to publish printed timetables and to manage operations and some included simple route planning capabilities. The HAFAs timetable information system developed in 1989 by the German company Hacon, (now part of Siemens AG) is an example of such a system and was adopted by
Swiss Federal Railways Swiss Federal Railways (german: link=no, Schweizerische Bundesbahnen, ''SBB''; french: link=no, Chemins de fer fédéraux suisses, ''CFF''; it, Ferrovie federali svizzere, ''FFS'') is the national railway company of Switzerland. It is usuall ...
(SBB) and
Deutsche Bahn The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder. describes itself as the se ...
in 1989. The ""Routes"" system of London Transport, now TfL, in use before the development of the on-line planner and covering all public transport services in London, was another example of a mainframe OLTP journey planner and included a large database of tourist attractions and popular destinations in London.


Second-generation systems

In the 1990s with the advent of personal computers with sufficient memory and processor power to undertake trip planning (which is relatively expensive computationally in terms of memory and processor requirements), systems were developed that could be installed and run on minicomputers and personal computers. The first digital public transport trip planner systems for a microcomputer was developed by Eduard Tulp, an informatica student at the Amsterdam University on an
Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., ...
PC. He was hired by the
Dutch Railways Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS; ; en, "Dutch Railways") is the principal passenger railway operator in the Netherlands. It is a Dutch state-owned company founded in 1938. The Dutch rail network is one of the busiest in the European Union, and the ...
to built a digital trip planner for the train services. In 1990 the first digital trip planner for the Dutch Railways (on diskette) was sold to be installed on PC's and computers for off-line consultation. The principles of his software program was published in a Dutch university paper in 1991 This was soon expanded to include all public transport in the Netherlands. Another pioneer was Hans-Jakob Tobler in Switzerland. His product ''Finajour'', which ran for
PC DOS PC or pc may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Player character or playable character, a fictional character controlled by a human player, usually in role-playing games or computer games * ''Port Charles'', an American daytime TV soap opera * ...
and
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
was the first electronic timetable for Switzerland. The first published version was sold for the timetable period 1989/1990.Tages-Anzeiger, 14 February 2009, p. 14, ''Hans-Jakob Tobler gestorben''. Source
Argus Medienbeobachtung (through archive.org)
(PDF file; 70 kB).
Alexandria

Other European countries soon followed with their own journey planners. A further development of this trend was to deploy trip planners onto even smaller platforms such as mobile devices, a
Windows CE Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is base ...
version of Hafas was launched in 1998 compressing the application and the entire railway timetable of Deutsche Bahn into six megabytes and running as a stand-alone application.


Early internet-based systems

The development of the internet allowed HTML based user interfaces to be added to allow direct querying of trip planning systems by the general public. A test web interface for HaFAs, was launched as
Deutsche Bahn The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder. describes itself as the se ...
's official rail trip planner in 1995 and evolved over time into the main Deutsche Bahn website. In 2001 Transport for London launched the world's first large-scale multimodal trip planner for a world city covering all of London's transport modes as well as rail routes to London; this used a trip planning engine supplied b

Mentz Gmbh] of Munich after earlier attempts in the late 1990s to add a web interface to TfL's own mainframe internal trip planner failed to scale. Internet trip planners for major transport networks such as national railways and major cities must sustain very high query rates and so require software architectures optimized to sustain such traffic. The world's first mobile trip planner for a large metropolitan area, a WAP based interface to the London using the Mentz engine, was launched in 2001 by London startup company Kizoom Ltd, who also launched the UK's first rail trip planner for the mobile internet in 2000, also as a WAP service, followed by an SMS service. Starting in 2000 the Traveline service provided all parts of the UK with regional multi-modal trip planning on bus, coach, and rail. A web-based trip planner for UK rail was launched by UK
National Rail Enquiries National Rail (NR) is the trading name licensed for use by the Rail Delivery Group, an unincorporated association whose membership consists of the passenger train operating companies (TOCs) of England, Scotland, and Wales. The TOCs run the p ...
in 2003. Early public transport trip planners typically required a stop or station to be specified for the endpoints. Some also supported inputting the name of a tourist attraction or other popular destination places by keeping a table of the nearest stop to the destination. This was later extended with ability to add addresses or coordinates to offer true point to point planning. Critical to the development of large-scale multi-modal trip planning in the late 1990s and early 2000s was the development in parallel of standards for encoding stop and schedule data from many different operators and the setting up of workflows to aggregate and distribute data on a regular basis. This is more challenging for modes such as bus and coach, where there tend to a large number of small operators, than for rail, which typically involves only a few large operators who have exchange formats and processes already in place in order to operate their networks. In Europe, which has a dense and sophisticated public transport network, the CEN
Transmodel Transmodel (formally ''CEN TC278, Reference Data Model For Public Transport, EN12896'') is the CEN European Reference Data Model for Public Transport Information; it provides a conceptual model of common public transport concepts and data structur ...
Reference Model for Public Transport was developed to support the process of creating and harmonizing standard formats both nationally and internationally.


Distributed journey planners

In the 2000s, Several major projects developed distributed trip planning architectures to allow the federation of separate trip planners each covering a specific area to create a composite engine covering a very large area. * The UK
Transport Direct Portal The Transport Direct Portal was a distributed Internet-based multi-modal journey planner providing information for travel in England, Wales and Scotland. It was managed by Transport Direct, a division of the Department for Transport. It was lau ...
launched in 2004 by the UK Department of Transport, used the JourneyWeb protocol to link eight separate regional engines covering data from 140 local transport authorities in England, Scotland and Wales as a unified engine. The portal integrated both road and public transport planners allowing a comparison between modes of travel times, footprint etc.. * The German Delfi project developed a distributed trip planning architecture used to federate the German regional planners, launched as a prototype in 2004. The Interface was further developed by the German TRIAS project and led to the development of a CEN Standard Open API for distributed journey planning' (CEN/TS 17118:2017) published in 2017 to provide a standard interface to trip planners, incorporating features from JourneyWeb and EU-Spirit and making use of the SIRI Protocol Framework and the Transmodel reference model. * The European EU Spirit project developed a long-distance trip planner between a number of different European regions


Second-generation internet systems

Public transport trip planners proved to be immensely popular (for example by 2005
Deutsche Bahn The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder. describes itself as the se ...
was already sustaining 2.8 million requests per day and journey planning sites constitute some of the highest trafficked information sites in every country that has them. The ability to purchase tickets for travel for the journeys found has further increased the utility and popularity of the sites; early implementations such as the UK's Trainline offered delivery of tickets by mail; this has been complemented in most European countries by self-service print and mobile fulfillment methods. Internet trip planners now constitute a primary sales channel for most rail and air transport operators.
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
started to add trip planning capabilities to its product set with a version of Google Transit in 2005, covering trips in the
Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...
region, as described by the
TriMet TriMet, formally known as the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, is a public agency that operates mass transit in a region that spans most of the Portland metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Oregon. Created in 1969 ...
agency manager Bibiana McHugh. This led to the development of the
General Transit Feed Specification GTFS, which stands for General Transit Feed Specification or (originally) Google Transit Feed Specification, defines a common format for public transportation schedules and associated geographic information. GTFS contains only static or schedul ...
(GTFS), a format for collecting transit data for use in trip planners that has been highly influential in developing an ecosystem of PT data feeds covering many different countries. The successful uptake of GTFS as an available output format by large operators in many countries has allowed Google to extend its trip planner coverage to many more regions around the world. The Google Transit trip planning capabilities were integrated into the Google Map product in 2012. Further evolution of trip planning engines has seen the integration of real time data so that trip plans for the immediate future take into account real time delays and disruptions. The UK
National Rail Enquiries National Rail (NR) is the trading name licensed for use by the Rail Delivery Group, an unincorporated association whose membership consists of the passenger train operating companies (TOCs) of England, Scotland, and Wales. The TOCs run the p ...
added real time to its rail trip planner in 2007. Also significant has been the integration of other types of data into the trip planning results such as disruption notices, crowding levels, CO2 costs, etc. The trip planners of some major metropolitan cities such as the Transport for London trip planner have the ability to dynamically suspend individual stations and whole lines so that modified trip plans are produced during major disruptions that omit the unavailable parts of the network. Another development has been the addition of accessibility data and the ability for algorithms to optimize plans to take into account the requirements of specific disabilities such as wheelchair access. For the London 2012 Olympics, an enhanced London trip planner was created that allowed the proposed trip results to be biased to manage available capacity across different routes, spreading traffic to less congested routes. Another innovation was the detailed modelling of all the access paths into and out of every Olympic venue, (from PT stop to individual arena entrance) with predicted and actual queueing times to allow for security checks and other delays being factored into the recommended travel times. An initiative to develop an open source trip planner, the OpenTripPlanner was seeded by Portland, Oregon's transit agency
TriMet TriMet, formally known as the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, is a public agency that operates mass transit in a region that spans most of the Portland metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Oregon. Created in 1969 ...
in 2009 and developed with the participation of agencies and operators in the US and Europe; a full version 1.0 released in September 2016, is making it possible for smaller transit agencies and operators to provide trip planning without paying proprietary license fees.


Mobile applications

The usability of mobile internet trip planners was transformed by the launch of the Apple iPhone in 2007. The iPhone and similar smartphone such as Android allowed more intelligence to be placed in the client as well offering a larger format and maps and so much more usable interfaces could be created. The incorporation of the current spatial location from the mobile device's GPS also simplified some interactions. The first iPhone App for UK rail trip planning was launched by UK Startup Kizoom Ltd in 2008 and a large market for trip planning and travel information applications has subsequently developed around the world, with applications being provided both by transport operators and third parties. In the UK this was greatly facilitated by the open data policy of Transport for London which made its trip planning engine and other data feeds available to third-party developers. Advanced mobile applications such as
Citymapper Citymapper is a public transit app and mapping service which displays transport options, usually with live timing, between any two locations in a supported city. It integrates data for all urban modes of transport, including walking, cycling an ...
now integrate multiple types of data feed including trip planning for cities in every continent and give the user a uniform interface regardless of the country or city they are in.


Mode-specific considerations


Public transport routing

A public transport route planner is an intermodal journey planner, typically accessed via the
web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
that provides information about available
public transport Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typical ...
services. The application prompts a user to input an origin and a destination, and then uses algorithms to find a good route between the two on public transit services. Time of travel may be constrained to either time of departure or arrival and other routing preferences may be specified as well. An intermodal journey planner supports intermodal journeys i.e. using more than one
modes of transport Mode of transport is a term used to distinguish between different ways of transportation or transporting people or goods. The different modes of transport are air, water, and land transport, which includes rails or railways, road and off-road tr ...
, such as cycling,
rapid transit Rapid transit or mass rapid transit (MRT), also known as heavy rail or metro, is a type of high-capacity public transport generally found in urban areas. A rapid transit system that primarily or traditionally runs below the surface may be c ...
,
bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...
,
ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...
, etc. Many route planners support door-to-door planning while others only work between stops on the
transport network A transport network, or transportation network, is a network or graph in geographic space, describing an infrastructure that permits and constrains movement or flow. Examples include but are not limited to road networks, railways, air routes, ...
, such as stations,
airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface ...
s or
bus stop A bus stop is a place where buses stop for passengers to get on and off the bus. The construction of bus stops tends to reflect the level of usage, where stops at busy locations may have shelters, seating, and possibly electronic passenger ...
s. For public transport routing the trip planner is constrained by times of arrival or departure. It may also support different optimization criteria – for example, ''fastest route, fewest changes, most accessible''. Optimization by price (''cheapest, "most flexible fare'', etc.) is usually done by a separate algorithm or engine, though trip planners that can return fare prices for the trips they find may also offer sorting or filtering of results by price and product type. For long-distance rail and air trip planning, where price is a significant consideration in price optimizing trip planners may suggest the cheapest dates to travel for customers are flexible as to travel time.


Car routing

The planning of road legs is sometimes done by a separate subsystem within a journey planner, but may consider both single mode trip calculations as well as intermodal scenarios (e.g.
Park and Ride A park and ride, also known as incentive parking or a commuter lot, is a parking lot with public transport connections that allows commuting, commuters and other people heading to city centres to leave their vehicles and transfer to a bus, Rail t ...
,
kiss and ride A park and ride, also known as incentive parking or a commuter lot, is a parking lot with public transport connections that allows commuters and other people heading to city centres to leave their vehicles and transfer to a bus, rail system (rapi ...
, etc.). Typical optimizations for
car routing A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods. The year 1886 is regarded as t ...
are ''shortest route'', ''fastest route'', ''cheapest route'' and with constraints for specific ''waypoints.'' The rise of e-mobility poses new challenges to route planning, e.g. sparse charging infrastructure, limited range, and long charging have to be taken into account and offer room for optimization. Some advanced journey planners can take into account average journey times on road sections, or even real-time predicted average journey times on road sections.


Pedestrian routing

A journey planner will ideally provide detailed routing for pedestrian access to stops, stations, points of interest etc. This will include options to take into account accessibility requirements for different types of users, for example; 'no steps', 'wheelchair access', 'no lifts', etc.


Bicycle routing

Some journey planning systems can calculate bicycle routes, integrating all paths accessible by bicycle and often including additional information like topography, traffic, on-street cycling infrastructure, etc. These systems assume, or allow the user to specify, preferences for quiet or safe roads, minimal elevation change,
bicycle lanes Cycling infrastructure is all infrastructure cyclists are allowed to use. Bikeways include bike paths, bike lanes, cycle tracks, rail trails and, where permitted, sidewalks. Roads used by motorists are also cycling infrastructure, except ...
, etc.


Data requirements

Trip planners depend on a number of different types of data and the quality and extent of this data limits their capability. Some trip planners integrate many different kinds of data from numerous sources. Others may work with one mode only, such as flight itineraries between airports, or using only addresses and the street network for driving directions.


Contextual data


Point of interest data

Passengers don't travel because they want to go to a particular station or stop, but because they want to go some destination of interest, such as a sports arena, tourist attraction, shopping center, park, law court, etc., etc. Many trip planners allow users to look for such "Points of interest", either by name or by category (''museum, stadium, prison,'' etc.). Data sets of systematically named, geocoded and categorized popular destinations can be obtained commercially, for example, The UK PointX data set, or derived from opensource data sets such as
Open Street Map OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed g ...
. Major operators such as Transport for London or
National Rail National Rail (NR) is the trading name licensed for use by the Rail Delivery Group, an unincorporated association whose membership consists of the passenger train operating companies (TOCs) of England, Scotland, and Wales. The TOCs run the p ...
have historically had well developed sets of such data for use in their Customer Call centers, along with information on the links to the nearest stops. For points of interest that cover a large area, such as parks, country houses or stadia, a precise geocoding of the entrances is important.


Gazetteer data

Trip planning user interfaces can be made more usable by integration of
Gazetteer A gazetteer is a geographical index or directory used in conjunction with a map or atlas.Aurousseau, 61. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup, social statistics and physical features of a country, region, or co ...
data. This can be associated with stops to assist with stop finding in particular, for example for disambiguation; there are 33 places named Newport in the US and 14 in the UK - a Gazetteer can be used to distinguish which is which and also in some cases to indicate the relationship of transport interchanges with towns and urban centers that passengers are trying to reach - for example only one of London's five or so Airports is actually in London. Data for this purpose typically comes from additional layers in a map data set such as that provided by
Esri Esri (; Environmental Systems Research Institute) is an American multinational geographic information system (GIS) software company. It is best known for its ArcGIS products. With a 43% market share, Esri is the world's leading supplier of GIS ...
,
Ordnance Survey , nativename_a = , nativename_r = , logo = Ordnance Survey 2015 Logo.svg , logo_width = 240px , logo_caption = , seal = , seal_width = , seal_caption = , picture = , picture_width = , picture_caption = , formed = , preceding1 = , di ...
, Navtech, or specific data sets such as the UK
National Public Transport Gazetteer The National Public Transport Gazetteer (NPTG) provides a topographic database of towns and settlements in the UK; it provides a common frame of reference for the National Public Transport Access Nodes (NaPTAN) schema and other UK Public Trans ...
.


Road data


Road network data

Road trip planners, sometimes referred to as route planners, use street and footpath network data to compute a route using simply the network connectivity (i.e. trips may run at any time and not constrained by a timetable). Such data can come from one or more public, commercial or crowdsourced datasets such as
TIGER The tiger (''Panthera tigris'') is the largest living cat species and a member of the genus '' Panthera''. It is most recognisable for its dark vertical stripes on orange fur with a white underside. An apex predator, it primarily preys on u ...
,
Esri Esri (; Environmental Systems Research Institute) is an American multinational geographic information system (GIS) software company. It is best known for its ArcGIS products. With a 43% market share, Esri is the world's leading supplier of GIS ...
or
OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed g ...
. The data is fundamental both for computing access legs to reach public transport stops, and to compute road trips in their own right. The fundamental representation is a graph of nodes and edges (i.e. points and links). The data may be further annotated to assist trip planning for different modes; * Road data may be characterized by road type (highway, major road, minor road, track, etc.), turn restrictions, speed restrictions etc., as well as average travel times at different times of day on different day types (''Weekday, Weekend, Public Holiday,'' etc.), so that accurate travel time predictions can be offered * Cycle road and path data may be annotated with characteristics such as cycle route number, traffic levels, surface, lighting, etc. that affect its usability by cyclists. * Footpath data may be annotated with accessibility characteristics such as steps, lifts, wheelchair access, ramps, etc., etc., and also safety indicators (e.g., lighting,
CCTV Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly t ...
, help points, ) so that accessibility constrained trip plans can be computed.


Real-time data for roads

Advanced road trip planners take into account the real-time state of the network. They use two main types of feed to do this, obtained from road data services using interfaces such as
Datex II Datex II or Datex2 is a data exchange standard for exchanging traffic information between traffic management centres, traffic service providers, traffic operators and media partners. It contains for example traffic incidents, current road works an ...
or UTMC. * Situation data, which described the incidents, events and planned roadworks in a structured form that can be related to the network; this is used to decorate trip plans and road maps to show current bottlenecks and incident locations. *Link traffic flow data, which gives a quantitative measurement of the current flow on each link of the network that is monitored; this can be used to take actual current conditions into account when computing predicted journey times.


Public transport data

For transit route planners to work, transit schedule data must always be kept up to date. To facilitate data exchange and interoperability between different trip planners, several standard data formats have emerged. The
General Transit Feed Specification GTFS, which stands for General Transit Feed Specification or (originally) Google Transit Feed Specification, defines a common format for public transportation schedules and associated geographic information. GTFS contains only static or schedul ...
, developed in 2006, is now used by hundreds of transit agencies around the world. In the European Union all public passenger travel operators have the obligation to provide the information under the EU railway timetable data exchange format. In other parts of the world there similar exchange standards.


Stop data

The location and identity of Public transport access points such as bus, tram and coach stops, stations, airports, ferry landing and ports are fundamental to trip planning and a stop data set is an essential layer of the transport data infrastructure. In order to integrate stops with spatial searches and road routing engines they are geocoded. In order to integrate them with the timetables and routes they are given a unique identifier within the transport network. In order to be recognizable to passengers they are given official names and may also have a public short code (for example the three letter
IATA The International Air Transport Association (IATA ) is a trade association of the world's airlines founded in 1945. IATA has been described as a cartel since, in addition to setting technical standards for airlines, IATA also organized tariff ...
codes for airports) to use in interfaces. Historically, different operators quite often used a different identifier for the same stop and stop numbers were not unique within a country or even a region. Systems for managing stop data, such as the International Union of Railways (UIC) station location code set or the UK's NaPTAN (National Public Transport Access Point) system for stop numbers provide a means of ensuring numbers are unique and the stops are fully described, greatly facilitate the integration of data. Timetable exchange formats, such as
GTFS GTFS, which stands for General Transit Feed Specification or (originally) Google Transit Feed Specification, defines a common format for public transportation schedules and associated geographic information. GTFS contains only static or schedul ...
,
TransXChange TransXChange is a UK national XML based data standard for the interchange of bus route and timetable information between bus operators, the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, local authorities and passenger transport executives, and others in ...
or
NeTEx NeTEx (formally Network Timetable Exchange ''PD CEN/TS 16614-1:2014', PD CEN/TS 16614-2:2014 and PD CEN/TS 16614-3:2014'') is the CEN Technical standard for exchanging Public Transport Information as XML documents. It provides a W3C XML schem ...
include stop data in their formats and spatial data sets such as
OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed g ...
allow stop identifiers to be geocoded.


Public transport network topology data

For public transport networks with a very high frequency of service, such as urban metro cities and inner city bus services, the topology of the network can also be used for route planning, with an average interval being assumed rather than specific departure times. Data on the routes of trains and buses is also useful for providing visualization of results, for example, to plot the route of a train on a map. National mapping bodies, such as the UK's
Ordnance Survey , nativename_a = , nativename_r = , logo = Ordnance Survey 2015 Logo.svg , logo_width = 240px , logo_caption = , seal = , seal_width = , seal_caption = , picture = , picture_width = , picture_caption = , formed = , preceding1 = , di ...
typically include a transport layer in their data sets and the European INSPIRE framework includes public transport infrastructure links in its set of strategic digital data. The CEN
NeTEx NeTEx (formally Network Timetable Exchange ''PD CEN/TS 16614-1:2014', PD CEN/TS 16614-2:2014 and PD CEN/TS 16614-3:2014'') is the CEN Technical standard for exchanging Public Transport Information as XML documents. It provides a W3C XML schem ...
format allows both the physical layer (e.g. road and railway track infrastructure links) and the logical layer (e.g. links between scheduled stopping points on a given line) of the transport infrastructure to be exchanged


Public transport timetables

Data on public transport schedules is used by trip planners to determine the available journeys at specific times. Historically rail data has been widely available in national formats, and many countries also have bus and other mode data in national formats such as VDV 452 (Germany),
TransXChange TransXChange is a UK national XML based data standard for the interchange of bus route and timetable information between bus operators, the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, local authorities and passenger transport executives, and others in ...
(UK) and Neptune (France). Schedule data is also increasingly becoming available in international formats such as
GTFS GTFS, which stands for General Transit Feed Specification or (originally) Google Transit Feed Specification, defines a common format for public transportation schedules and associated geographic information. GTFS contains only static or schedul ...
and
NeTEx NeTEx (formally Network Timetable Exchange ''PD CEN/TS 16614-1:2014', PD CEN/TS 16614-2:2014 and PD CEN/TS 16614-3:2014'') is the CEN Technical standard for exchanging Public Transport Information as XML documents. It provides a W3C XML schem ...
. To allow a route to be projected onto a map, GTFS allows the specification of a simple shape plot; whilst
Transmodel Transmodel (formally ''CEN TC278, Reference Data Model For Public Transport, EN12896'') is the CEN European Reference Data Model for Public Transport Information; it provides a conceptual model of common public transport concepts and data structur ...
based standards such as CEN
NeTEx NeTEx (formally Network Timetable Exchange ''PD CEN/TS 16614-1:2014', PD CEN/TS 16614-2:2014 and PD CEN/TS 16614-3:2014'') is the CEN Technical standard for exchanging Public Transport Information as XML documents. It provides a W3C XML schem ...
,
TransXChange TransXChange is a UK national XML based data standard for the interchange of bus route and timetable information between bus operators, the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, local authorities and passenger transport executives, and others in ...
additionally allow a more detailed representation which can recognize the constituent links and distinguish several different semantic layers.


Real-time prediction information for public transport

Trip planners may be able to incorporate real-time information into their database and consider them in the selection of optimal routes for travel in the immediate future. Automatic vehicle location (AVL) systems monitor the position of vehicles using GPS systems and can pass on real-time and forecast information to the journey planning system. A trip planner may use a real time interface such as the CEN
Service Interface for Real Time Information The Standard Interface for Real-time Information or SIRI is an XML protocol to allow distributed computers to exchange real-time information about public transport services and vehicles. The protocol is a CEN norm, developed originally as a tec ...
to obtain this data.


Situation information

A situation is a software representation of an incident or event that is affecting or is likely to affect the transport network. A trip planner can integrate situation information and use it both to revise its trip planning computations and to annotate its responses so as to inform users through both text and map representations. A trip planner will typically use a standard interface such as
SIRI Siri ( ) is a virtual assistant that is part of Apple Inc.'s iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, tvOS, and audioOS operating systems. It uses voice queries, gesture based control, focus-tracking and a natural-language user interface to answer questio ...
,
TPEG The Transport Protocol Experts Group (TPEG) is a data protocol suite for traffic and travel related information. TPEG can be carried over different transmission media (bearers), such as digital broadcast or cellular networks (wireless Internet). ...
or
Datex II Datex II or Datex2 is a data exchange standard for exchanging traffic information between traffic management centres, traffic service providers, traffic operators and media partners. It contains for example traffic incidents, current road works an ...
to obtain situation information. Incidents are captured through an
incident capturing system Incident may refer to: * A property of a graph in graph theory * ''Incident'' (film), a 1948 film noir * Incident (festival), a cultural festival of The National Institute of Technology in Surathkal, Karnataka, India * Incident (Scientology), a ...
(ICS) by different operators and stakeholders, for example in transport operator control rooms, by broadcasters or by the emergency services. Text and image information can be combined with the trip result. Recent incidents can be considered within the routing as well as visualized in an interactive map.


Technology

Typically journey planners use an efficient in-memory representation of the network and timetable to allow the rapid searching of a large number of paths. Database queries may also be used where the number of nodes needed to compute a journey is small, and to access ancillary information relating to the journey. A single engine may contain the entire transport network, and its schedules, or may allow the
distributed computation A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...
of journeys using a distributed journey planning protocol such as JourneyWeb or
Delfi Protocol Delfi may refer to * Delfi (web portal), internet portal in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania * Delfi (chess), chess engine * Delfi bookstores, a chain of bookstores in Serbia * Delfi Limited, a Singaporean confectionery company See also

* Delph ...
. A journey planning engine may be accessed by different front ends, using a software protocol or
application program interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...
specialized for journey queries, to provide a
user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...
on different types of device. The development of journey planning engines has gone hand in hand with the development of data standards for representing the stops, routes and timetables of the network, such as
TransXChange TransXChange is a UK national XML based data standard for the interchange of bus route and timetable information between bus operators, the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, local authorities and passenger transport executives, and others in ...
,
NaPTAN The National Public Transport Access Node (NaPTAN) database is a UK nationwide system for uniquely identifying all the points of access to public transport in the UK. The dataset is closely associated with the National Public Transport Gazettee ...
,
Transmodel Transmodel (formally ''CEN TC278, Reference Data Model For Public Transport, EN12896'') is the CEN European Reference Data Model for Public Transport Information; it provides a conceptual model of common public transport concepts and data structur ...
or
GTFS GTFS, which stands for General Transit Feed Specification or (originally) Google Transit Feed Specification, defines a common format for public transportation schedules and associated geographic information. GTFS contains only static or schedul ...
that ensure that these fit together. Journey planning algorithms are a classic example of problems in the field of
Computational complexity theory In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved by ...
. Real-world implementations involve a tradeoff of computational resources between accuracy, completeness of the answer, and the time required for calculation. The sub-problem of route planning is an easier problem to solve as it generally involves less data and fewer constraints. However, with the development of "road timetables", associating different journey times for road links at different times of day, time of travel is increasingly relevant for route planners as well.


Algorithms

Journey planners use a
routing algorithm Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a Network theory, network or between or across multiple networks. Broadly, routing is performed in many types of networks, including circuit switching, circuit-switched networks, such as ...
to search a
graph Graph may refer to: Mathematics *Graph (discrete mathematics), a structure made of vertices and edges **Graph theory, the study of such graphs and their properties *Graph (topology), a topological space resembling a graph in the sense of discre ...
representing the transport network. In the simplest case where routing is independent of time, the graph uses (directed) edges to represent street/path segments and
nodes In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a Vertex (graph theory), vertex). Node may refer to: In mathematics *Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph *Vertex (geometry), a point where two ...
to represent intersections. Routing on such a graph can be accomplished effectively using any of a number of routing algorithms such as Dijkstra's, A*, Floyd–Warshall, or
Johnson's algorithm Johnson's algorithm is a way to find the shortest paths between all pairs of vertices in an edge-weighted directed graph. It allows some of the edge weights to be negative numbers, but no negative-weight cycles may exist. It works by using ...
. Different weightings such as distance, cost or accessibility may be associated with each edge, and sometimes with nodes. When time-dependent features such as public transit are included, there are several proposed ways of representing the transport network as a graph and different algorithms may be used such as RAPTOR


Automated trip planner

Automated trip planners generate your
itinerary Itinerary or Itineraries or Itinerarium may refer to: Travel * Itinerarium, an Ancient Roman road map in the form of a listing of cities, villages, and other stops, with the intervening distances * ''Itinerarium Burdigalense'', also known as the ...
automatically, based on the information you provide. One way is to submit the desired destination, dates of your trip and interests and the plan will be created in a while. Another way is to provide the necessary information by forwarding confirmation
e-mails Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
from
airlines An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for codeshare agreements, in whic ...
, hotels and car rental companies.


Custom trip planner

With a custom trip planner the user creates one's own travel itinerary individually by picking the appropriate activities from a database. Some of these websites like Triphobo.com offer pre-built databases of points of interest, while others rely on
user generated content User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is any form of content, such as images, videos, text, testimonials, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms such as social media, discussion f ...
. In 2017, Google released a mobile app called Google Trips. Custom trip planning startups are seeing renewed interest from investors with the advent of data science, AI and voice technologies in 2018.
Lola.com Lola.com is a software as a service (SaaS) company based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is best known for developing corporate travel management and expense software for web browsers, the App Store and Google Play. The company was founded in 2015 b ...
, an AI based travel planning startup and Hopper.com have managed to raise significant funding for developing trip planning apps. When bookings and payments are added to a mobile trip planner app, then the result is considered
mobility as a service Mobility as a service (MaaS) is a type of service that, through a joint digital channel, enables users to plan, book, and pay for multiple types of mobility services. The concept describes a shift away from personally-owned modes of transportation ...
.


Commercial software

Distribution companies may incorporate route planning software into their
fleet management Fleet management is the management of: * Commercial motor vehicles such as cars, vans, trucks, specialist vehicles (such as mobile construction machinery), forklifts, and trailers * Private vehicles used for work purposes (the 'grey fleet') * Avi ...
systems to optimize route efficiency. A route planning setup for distribution companies will often include GPS tracking capability and advanced reporting features which enable dispatchers to prevent unplanned stops, reduce mileage, and plan more fuel-efficient routes.


See also

*
Automotive navigation system An automotive navigation system is part of the automobile controls or a third party add-on used to find direction in an automobile. It typically uses a satellite navigation device to get its position data which is then correlated to a position on ...
* Intelligent transportation system *
Multimodal transport Multimodal transport (also known as combined transport) is the transportation of goods under a single contract, but performed with at least two different modes of transport; the carrier is liable (in a legal sense) for the entire carriage, even th ...
* Online diary planners for trips and holidays *
Pathfinding Pathfinding or pathing is the plotting, by a computer application, of the shortest route between two points. It is a more practical variant on solving mazes. This field of research is based heavily on Dijkstra's algorithm for finding the sh ...
*
Public transport route planner A journey planner, trip planner, or route planner is a specialized search engine used to find an optimal means of travelling between two or more given locations, sometimes using more than one transport mode. Searches may be optimized on different ...
*
Service Interface for Real Time Information The Standard Interface for Real-time Information or SIRI is an XML protocol to allow distributed computers to exchange real-time information about public transport services and vehicles. The protocol is a CEN norm, developed originally as a tec ...
*
TPEG The Transport Protocol Experts Group (TPEG) is a data protocol suite for traffic and travel related information. TPEG can be carried over different transmission media (bearers), such as digital broadcast or cellular networks (wireless Internet). ...
*
Transmodel Transmodel (formally ''CEN TC278, Reference Data Model For Public Transport, EN12896'') is the CEN European Reference Data Model for Public Transport Information; it provides a conceptual model of common public transport concepts and data structur ...
*
Travel technology Travel technology (also called tourism technology, and hospitality automation) is the application of Information Technology (IT) or Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. Some forms of tra ...
*
Travel website A travel website is a website that provides travel reviews, trip fares, or a combination of both. Over 1.5 billion people book travel per year, 70% of which is done online. Categories Categories of travel websites include: ;Travelogues and blo ...
*
Public transport timetable A public transport timetable (also timetable and North American English schedule) is a document setting out information on public transport service times, to assist passengers with planning a trip. Typically, the timetable will list the times w ...
*
Sustainable transport Sustainable transport refers to ways of transportation that are sustainable in terms of their social and environmental impacts. Components for evaluating sustainability include the particular vehicles used for road, water or air transport; th ...
*
Transit district A transit district or transit authority is a government agency or a Statutory corporation, public-benefit corporation created for the purpose of providing public transportation within a specific region. A transit district may operate bus, Rail ...


References

{{authority control Public transport information systems Sustainable transport Route planning software Cartography Intermodal passenger transport Scheduling (transportation) Travel websites