Transport for NSW has started a project to develop a multimodal journey planner, months after ending a trial of its multimodal Digital Opal card.
Following the trial’s success, the state budget for June included a $570 million project to permanently integrate Digital Opal into the state’s transportation system.
At the time, Digital Opal would accommodate “train, bus, e-bike, e-scooter, rideshare or even electric vehicle charging,” according to treasurer Matt Kean.
TfNSW specifies in a tender that the planning engine must handle every facet of a customer’s full journey, including trip planning, booking, and payment from door to door.
According to the tender, “Our customers will plan, reserve, and pay for their end-to-end transportation services using the next generation trip planning engine.”
In the tender, it was claimed that the planner will not be limited to TfNSW services: “Our customers want a single and seamless end-to-end experience when planning their travels across public transport and with third-party transport providers.”
A multimodal planner is essential to TfNSW’s “Mobility as a Service” strategy, which it claims the trip planning engine is a part of.
The cloud-based travel planner must “provide great digital consumer services,” according to he tender states, and “must be able to integrate with other TfNSW digital channels.”