Unique Travel Planner developed for Baltic Sea passenger ships and vehicle transport

VTT has in collaboration with institutes from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany developed a Travel Planner, which helps to plan combined passenger ship and vehicle trips between Finland, Scandinavia and Germany. The service contains information about the 30 biggest passenger ship lines in the Baltic Sea and digital maps of road transport between the destinations and ports. The Travel Planner is able to define several route plans from origin to destination e.g. from Helsinki to Hamburg.

The Baltic Sea passenger ships route, timetable and attribute data are for the first time collected in a common Data Pool, which is especially adapted for the use of commercial service providers. The Data Pool is utilized as a basis for the Travel Planner of passenger ship lines and vehicle transport and it is open for all users.

The Travel Planner offers a comprehensive and versatile package of information about traveling alternatives over the Baltic Sea. The Data Pool information together with digital maps from road network can be utilized for planning combined vehicle and passenger ship trips between Finland, Scandinavian countries and Germany. Furthermore the Data Pool contains information about passenger ship companies and links to their booking systems.

In practice the service is utilized e.g. by entering “Helsinki, Eteläesplanadi 16” to the from column and “Hannover, Hindenburgstrasse 2” to the to column. A routing algorithm then defines several route plans from origin to destination combining route, passenger ships and bridging road transport connections. It is also possible to simply write “Helsinki” to the from column and “Hamburg” to the to column. As a result the service gives a map picture of the selected route and detailed driving instructions.

The service is implemented in co-operation between Euro regional VIKING project as well as road authorities and Ministries from Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway and Sweden. WM-data and Hacon were responsible for the technical implementation of the Data Pool and the Travel Planner.

The service is planned to be operated with public funding until the end of 2007.

The Travel Planner can be reached trough the VIKING travel information service (http://www.travel-and-transport.com) or directly through (http://www.ferry-routing.com).