Transport for NSW seeks trip planning engine

Months after concluding a trial of its multimodal Digital Opal card, Transport for NSW has embarked on a project to create a multimodal journey planner.

After the success of the trial, in the June state budget the state government announced a $570 million project to make Digital Opal a permanent feature of the state’s transport network.

At that time, treasurer Matt Kean said Digital Opal would support “train, bus, e-bike, e-scooter, rideshare or even electric vehicle charging”.

In a tender, TfNSW explains that the planning engine has to cover all aspects of a customer’s entire journey – planning, booking and paying for a trip from door to door.

“The next generation trip planning engine will be used by our customers to plan, book and pay for their end-to-end transport services”, the tender stated.

The planner won’t be restricted to TfNSW services, the tender stated: “Our customers expect a single and seamless end-to-end experience when planning their trips across public transport and with third-party transport providers”.

TfNSW says the trip planning engine is part of its “Mobility as a Service” ecosystem, and a multimodal planner is key to that strategy.

The cloud-based trip planning engine will have to “deliver exceptional digital customer services”, the tender states, and “must be able to integrate with other TfNSW digital channels.”