Data processing: vehicles – navigation – and relative location – Navigation – Determination of travel data based on the start point and...
Reexamination Certificate
2002-10-18
2004-12-21
Zanelli, Michael J. (Department: 3661)
Data processing: vehicles, navigation, and relative location
Navigation
Determination of travel data based on the start point and...
C701S209000, C701S210000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06834229
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention concerns improvements relating to journey planning and more particularly though not exclusively to an integrated journey planner and a method of providing integrated journey travel information. The integrated journey planner, more specifically referred to as a Comparison Navigator™, can combine timetabled information (for rail for example) and non-timetabled information (for cars for example) to provide integrated journey information. A specific road routing engine for implementing searches between user selected geographical locations to return the best road route, according to user preferences (usually speed), can also be used with the integrated journey planner.
While Europe, for example, enjoys a sophisticated public transport and road network system, journey planning is not a straightforward process. Deciding on how to get between different geographical locations usually entails multiple enquiries to different operators and/or reliance on travel agents or other intermediaries.
There are several different ways in which journey planning can be achieved at present and these are described in turn.
One of the most common types of systems currently employed is a central reservations system (CRS). Examples of some of the largest CRSs are Sabre. Amadeus Gallileo and Worldspan. Each of these systems has a large corporate client base and provides information mainly to corporate/travel agent clientele.
These systems rely on huge centralised databases of information which are accessible for travel information, for checking holiday availability and for making bookings. Travel information is usually provided regarding terminus to terminus (airport to airport for example) travel and requires an experienced operator familiar with specific system commands to access the information. Accordingly, customers normally access the database indirectly by using a travel agent who subscribes to the central reservations system.
The expertise and legacy mainframes of these systems are more designed towards bookings/reservations, than travel planning. The type of information obtained from these central databases is limited to a single operator or to a single mode of transport such as air or rail and cannot provide details regarding other modes of travel and cannot provide any integrated travel information. By integrated travel information (also known as multi-modal travel information) it is meant information linking together different modes of transport of different service providers to provide information for a single journey. Furthermore, the information can only be provided between predetermined access points of the service provider's network, with the user having to determine themselves where the most appropriate (usually nearest) access points to the network are from where they wish to start and finish their journey.
Dedicated on-line travel systems have recently entered the journey planning market place. These companies provide greater accessibility than CRSs because they enable customers to have direct access to them via the Internet. Examples of companies currently providing these services are expedia.com ebookers.com. travelocity.com, previewtravel.com, biztravel.com. and thetrip.com. Whilst the on-line user interface has been improved to enable non-experienced browsers to use the system, each on-line travel system is ultimately powered by a CRS and still suffers from the most of the limitations ascribed to this type of system.
These on-line travel systems now offer so called ‘comprehensive’ travel information and reservation facilities. All are accompanied by map viewing options, local resort information, country information and some degree of journey planning. However, they feature only air, hotel, car rental and holiday packages services. No other transport options are available for booking. Moreover, none of the services is designed or capable of providing user-defined location-to-location (point-to-point) journey details or multi-modal travel planning.
Recently, a few autoroute planning services have been created for use over the Internet. Examples of these are mapquest.com, mapblast.com and mapsonus.com. While successful and impressive, all are very US biased and are strictly focused on one means of transport—the car. Many offer only limited interactivity and generally use severely restricted map data sets: this ultimately is determined by a geographic database which supports the service. The dominant player. Mapquest is beginning to offer street level road planning in the UK. Michelin which also started recently, is the first service to offer a complete European road route planning service over the Internet.
Germany's national railway (bahn.de) has set up an Internet journey planning facility covering Continental Europe. The service offers only train planning, road journeys, for example, are not available. The service has recently incorporated an e-ticketing facility, although that is restricted to journeys starting from Germany.
All of the existing journey planners require the user to identify start and end locations (termini) for a mode of transport which have been selected by the user as being the most appropriate to their actual start and end locations. This may frequently waste time as the terminus selected may not be included on a particular service provider's network. For example, if a user lives in Watford and wishes to go to Geldrop (a suburb of Eindhoven in the Netherlands) they may select the closest airports Luton and Eindhoven. However, there may not be any possible flight from Luton to Eindhoven or the service provider who does fly to Eindhoven may not have Luton on their service network. Rather it may only be possible to fly from City Airport to Eindhoven or Heathrow to Eindhoven and the user would either simply not be able to determine a possible travel option or would spend a great deal of time trying out different termini combinations until one combination provided a possible option.
All of the above Internet journey planners are limited to a single mode of transport and do not address any issues relating to a total integrated multi-modal travel planning facility. Further the comparison of different modes of transport is not possible.
Over the past 25 years no European service has been able to offer truly integrated journey services on anything near a national, let alone, a Continental scale. The fragmented nature of the different transport groups, many of which are still in nationalised ownership, have made the task of data collection and system integration difficult. Even the recent emergence of Internet based journey planners in Europe, which enable users to make bookings themselves directly, typically only cover one mode of transport, thereby failing to inform users on all (and the most suitable) transport options available.
In summary, all the above existing systems fall significantly short both in the scope of transport options made available to the customer and in the integrated and comparative approach required for a travel planning service.
The present invention seeks to overcome at least some of the above described problems and other limitations of the prior art approaches.
It is desired to provide a method and system for providing complete journey information from user defined start and end points which are not restricted to predefined locations on a transport network.
It is also desired to provide an integrated travel planning system which provides the user with all of the currently available transport options for getting between two locations.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to one aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of providing journey information to a user, the method comprising: receiving unique location reference information identifying the start and end locations of the user-defined journey; considering at least some possible predetermined pairs of access points to a transport network of a single mode of transport, the access points being at different location
Ferguson John Spencer Guy
Harrison Paul Richard
Rafiah Moshe
Rice James Robert
Sadler Andrew John
Stevens & Showalter LLP
Travelfusion Limited
Zanelli Michael J.
LandOfFree
Integrated journey planner does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Integrated journey planner, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Integrated journey planner will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3297146