Estonia is about to create a single travel planning and ticket purchase platform in a bid to make traveling in Estonia easy.
“Currently, passengers don’t have a convenient unified system through which they can plan their journey by public transport and alternative modes of transportation. This is one of the reasons why people tend to prefer traveling by private car, because it is easier now,” said Johann Peetre, head of the mobility planning department at the Transport Administration.
He said that to address this problem, the state supports the creation of a prototype that will enable the private sector to establish a functional environment where various transport service providers can conveniently sell their services.
With the MaaS X-Road project, a prototype service platform is to be created for trip queries and ticket purchasing. Thereby a standardized X-Road data exchange layer will be created, which can be used by MaaS operators in the private market. A good example of this is the Helsinki public transport system platform, through which passengers can plan their journey and instantly purchase all necessary tickets.
There is urgent need for such a system, because currently different modes of transport each have their own booking and ticketing channels, the application programming interfaces (APIs) of which are not compatible.
MaaS X-road is an intermediate layer with secure data exchange that will connect all public transport and mobility service providers, enabling the emergence of a new kind of service on the market, where the services needed for the whole journey can be found in one place and boarding rights can be purchased in one transaction.
The development of the prototype will be done in modules, where the performance of each module is tested with stakeholders to ensure its suitability. If necessary, the solution will be adjusted before the next module is developed.
The project is funded by the innovation fund of the Government Office, it lasts for 18 months and costs 840,000 euros. The project involves the Transport Administration, the Ministry of Climate and the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture.
Source: BNS
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