The Danube Region Journey Planner is an outcome of the LinkingDanube project (2017-2019) funded under the Interreg Danube Transnational Programme. The project deals with the “linking of services” for transnational, multimodal traveller information and journey planning. Easier access to information on environmentally-friendly mobility options and seamless trip planning (across borders and operators) shall support travellers to use environmentally modes of transport.

The LinkingDanube project did a “proof-of-concept” and demonstrated that the “linking of services” and “open journey planning” is feasible!

To test the feasibility LinkingDanube interlinked six already existing traveller information services from different operators and different countries of the Danube Region based on the “linking of services” approach. To enable this, each journey planner implemented an harmonised API (Application Programming Interface) based on the CEN/TC 17118:2018 standard for “Open API for Distributed Journey Planning”, which enables the linking of different isolated services without any physical integration into one central database. Operators of traveller information services keep the sovereignty over their data, as only routing results are provided upon request via this interface. One central node, including the necessary logic to manage the requests and assemble the route, enables the communication within this distributed system.

So the project “LinkingDanube” developed a distributed travel planning pilot service, the "Danube Region Journey Planner", in a transnational semi-operative environment and thus demonstrates the feasibility and suitability of "linking of services" with regard to clearly defined use cases.

More information on “linking of services” you could find in our LinkingDanube video below.