Heuristic approach in a multimodal travel planner to support local authorities in urban traffic management

Abstract

Abstract Effective urban traffic management requires knowledge about current situation and tools to transfer information between local authorities and transport systems users. From this point of view, individual user route planning should correspond with general traffic flow management. During recent years significant increase of interest of web-based travel planners was observed. Authors suggest to connect the above issues. For this reason, Green Travelling Planner (GT Planner) was implemented. What the tool allows, among others, is optimum route planning (four optimisation criteria: quicker, shorter, cheaper and greener) using one of the eleven travel modes (including multimodal combinations). It may be used as an official urban multimodal travel planner and can be controlled by local authorities. The heuristic approach which was implemented in GT Planner makes it possible to support urban traffic management by adding specified factors as attributes of links in the graph of transport network. This solution can also be used to optimise the transport systems and public transport planning based on actual travel needs collected as Big Data as GT Planner is used. Examples provided in the article are based on partial results of the international project entitled “A Platform to analyse and foster the use of Green Travelling options” implemented under the ERA-NET Transport III Future Travelling programme and financed by the National Centre for Research and Development.