Transportation 4.0: providing door-to-door travel in a multimodal transportation system

Whether it’s keeping up with work while on the move, staying in touch with co-workers and friends, or just looking for some entertainment, travelers want to stay connected. Now, this demand is spreading to the transportation systems themselves. Roch Muraine, Global Sales Director, Transport at ALE looks at current and future technologies that are moving us towards a multimodal transportation system to create an entirely connected experience for passengers, and how these trends are set to disrupt the way we travel forever.

The technology to create seamless or connected multimodal transportation exists, but the majority of services are still being delivered to the end customer in a disconnected, piecemeal way. For example, a journey from A to B might involve switching from a bus to a train and then a ferry, with tickets purchased for each separate stage from the different operators providing transportation. To improve services and keep up with the massive growth in numbers of people traveling throughout the world, we need to look at new ways to streamline services for travelers and simplify the provision of services for operators.

Transportation 4.0 explained
All things point to a future that lies in multimodal transportation, where different forms of transportation are integrated into a single passenger interaction to arrange complete door-to-door travel. Imagine buying one ticket to get you on a train, to the airport and straight to the hotel — where your luggage will be waiting for you. The aim is to make travel experiences more efficient, safer, greener and less hassle while optimizing journey times, and minimizing costs for travelers. We are just now starting to see how this future might develop, with the potential to completely transform travel.

The connected experience — we’re already on our way
The multimodal experience starts at home or on your smartphone. There are already travel planning apps and websites that show different modes of transportation, times and costs to help get passengers from A to B, but even these are done through separate providers and intermodal systems. In the future, we will see services that will be able to book your whole itinerary through a single app – with one search and payment.

Smart-ticketing and e-ticketing are mostly already here. From boarding passes on smartphones to contactless card machines on buses, the next step will be to offer one ticket for all forms of travel. While simplifying travel for passengers, these ticketing systems are also useful to transportation operators as information gathered by smart systems can be analyzed to offer better services.

Single token travel is the next development in multimodal travel—using a passenger’s biometrics and travel data to create a digital record and provide secure authentication. The technology has the potential to create a seamless journey for passengers by cutting the time taken for security checks, check-in and boarding at airports and stations.

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