Overview
TRASCOM (TRAveller Assistance for COmbined Mobility in regional areas) aimed at developing multi-media applications using mobile Internet telephony to improve user mobility, combining all modes of transport, and covered three aspects:
- simplify real time access;
- include payment operations;
- link users and information/service suppliers.
TRASCOM included following tasks:
- requirements and system architecture;
- software development;
- integration and test;
- evaluation and assessment;
- dissemination and contribution to standardisation.
The overall objective of the TRASCOM project was to apply mobile technologies to the development and to validate prototype of a new multi- and intermodal transport software platform providing a set of integrated services in order to reduce the traffic congestion in urban areas and to meet specific transportation needs of people living in very low density or in cross border areas.
The set of integrated services was supposed to consist of trip information, trip selection and optimisation, booking, purchase, confirmation, localisation, access, real time assistance, payment, control, service and fleet management for different modes of transport by car (individual car, car renting, car sharing), bicycle, bus, train and aeroplane.
The project was applied to the advanced mobile technologies available in 2003.
Work sequence of the project was as follows:
- Functional specifications for mobile technology use in future transportation systems;
- Technical specifications and software architecture;
- Advanced mobile technology availability;
- Application software production;
- Field experimentation;
- Evaluation and assessment.
Funding
Results
At the technical level, the TRASCOM project has:
- developed and tested new integrated services using the most advanced form of mobile technologies (mobile phone, PDA, GPRS, UMTS, Bluetooth, SWAP, Ethernet wireless) in order to meet traveller and transport operators' expectations in terms of mobility and combination of all modes of transport in a regional context;
- developed and tested an universal, generic, open and scalable architecture for a regional, multi- and intermodal transport platform with mobile access;
- promoted a standard for data exchange between the information systems of transport operators.
To achieve these technical results, the project had to define:
- requirements for the services to be implemented in the platform, requirements based on an analysis of scenarios applicable to journeys carried out within an intermodal context of transport;
- new applications such as mobile electronic payments, real time assistance to traveller and enlarged intermodality, software specifications to implement the requirements;
- the specifications covering the cooperative architecture of the platform and its service integration server.
At the telecom level, the project has experimented with advanced mobile devices and new telecom mobile protocols (GPRS, UMTS, Bluetooth, SWAP).
TRASCOM expertise was partially based on the results of the previous IST ISCOM Project, especially the expertise in public transport information and database collection in the South-Alsace region.
To define socio-economic conditions for the marketing of the new platform and its associated services the project has analysed business, legal, ethical and user behaviour and acceptance models.
As a side effect the project has also contributed to the standardisation in the domains of 2.5G and 3G mobile communication at the level of the integration of functionalities in mobile devices and their human interfaces and at the level of interoperability with other devices. It has also contributed to standardisation in the semantic of passengers transportation data exchange between the information systems of transport operators in regional areas.