The ten years old international travel planner EU-Spirit coordinated by VBB Verkehrsverbund Berlin-Brandenburg was honoured by the EU project LINK with the LINK Award in Brussels 15 April 2010. The award acknowledges the excellent performance in the field of intermodal public transport travel information.
The EU-Spirit network offers cross-border timetable information on the Internet to users of public transport means. This service is based on a project that was performed during the European Union 5th Framework Programme on Research and Technical Development. The travel information service started in operation at the time the project was ending. Since then, VBB Verkehrsverbund Berlin- Brandenburg transport authority has been coordinating the work of the EU-Spirit providers from the different countries.
The current EU-Spirit providers are Denmark, Sweden and Germany. France, Luxembourg, and Poland will follow.
About ten years ago, transport companies and transport authorities started to interconnect their already existing travel information systems in order to offer their customers a continuous information service. The aim was to provide the customer with information beyond the own city limits or region limits to other European regions.
The EU-Spirit system functions on the principle of distributed connection search.
The different parts of a connection from the different travel information systems are interlinked in order to provide a continuous connection. The connection will then be displayed onto the regional travel planner that sent the request. In this way, the calculated trip is displayed in the language of the region. It can be a connection from Berlin to Legoland in Billund, from Copenhagen to Malmo via Oresund bridge, or from Stuttgart to Stockholm. Details about the functions of EU-Spirit can be found at www.euspirit.com.
The number of EU-Spirit users increased continuously as well as the range of
functions. EU-Spirit can be tested at VBB’s travel information service VBB-Fahrinfo,
column “Europe” – see VBBonline.de.
The EU project LINK – The European Forum on Intermodal Passenger Travel
(www.linkforum.eu) honoured EU-Spirit for its customer-friendly innovation and outstanding achievements in the field of intermodal passenger travel”. Ines Ayala Sender, member of the European Parliament, handed the award to Juergen Ross, EU-Spirit coordinator on behalf of VBB Verkehrsverbund Berlin- Brandenburg. She particularly underlined “the importance of an easy-to-use international information for a merging Europe”.
For more: www.vbbonline.de or www.linkforum.eu
