Product oriented integration of heterogeneous mobility services

Abstract

Growing spontaneous mobility demand and decreasing affinity to automobile ownership in young generations require integrated concepts for intermodal mobility. Especially in areas with insufficient capacity coverage by traditional public transport, adding alternative services, e.g. car sharing, seems promising. Currently, customers have to combine different means of transportation manually by checking several information sources, creating a combined itinerary and booking several, mode specific tickets. This paper presents an information system architecture, the so-called Mobility Broker, a joint platform for mobility services that enables provider collaboration to offer travelers the best possible combined service. Mobility Broker combines heterogeneous mobility service data, like time tables and car sharing places, using standardized open interfaces and well-known methods of data integration. The combined information allows intermodal routing for generating combined itineraries. Furthermore, it allows to use one ticket for heterogenous travelings. By this simplification of access to intermodal travel, we aim to foster the integration of alternative public transport modes. Thereby, the heterogeneous mobility service product characteristics and related synergy effects determine the approach fundamentally.