Paper presented at the 33rd Annual Southern African Transport Conference 7-10 July 2014 "Leading Transport into the Future", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.
With information and technology becoming such a vital commodity in everyday life, it can be
argued that informed travellers are the key to successful future transport services. Fortunately, it is
recognised that the development of a multimodal transport system is needed in providing
integrated traveller information. The relating challenges and the applicable considerations in
attaining such an integrated system were researched. Following from this, a generic sequential
framework that facilitates multimodal data integration and traveller information as a precursor to a
fully integrated multimodal system was developed. In this framework four focus areas, related to
the implementation requirements of the application environment considered, were identified.
These areas are based on the premise that current technological evolvements need to be
exploited in order to breach the missing intelligent link between the various application
environments. The focus areas are: 1) the multimodal transport network and the design and
modelling thereof, 2) the role of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) in achieving a multimodal
platform, 3) the need for and the design criteria of a centralised database, and 4) the need for and
the travel information requirements of a multimodal Journey Planner (JP). The establishment of
such a concise framework (along with its associated steps in attaining multimodal information) will
go a long way towards providing the impetus, and eradicate the barriers, in achieving sustainable
traveller information services. Ideally, South Africa (SA) will be able to empower a better transport
service that spans across the nation’s social barriers.
