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Estonia adopts journey planning service for passengers, first developed in Helsinki, Finland – speeding up cross border development between both countries

Estonia adopts journey planning service for passengers, first developed in Helsinki, Finland – speeding up cross border development between both countries

Estonia and Finland will both benefit from the new cross-border development co-operation for the journey planning service, gaining shared knowledge and an improved passenger experience – a significant outcome of EU-based project FinEst Smart Mobility.

Maanteeamet, the Estonian Road Administration, is starting to use the Finnish-based Digitransit journey planning platform for public transport, cycling and walking. Digitransit has been developed in Finland by HSL, TVV lippu- ja maksujärjestelmä Oy (LMJ) and Traficom, with all public transport authorities’ journey planners in the major cities in Finland using the Digitransit platform. The technology transfer received funding from the FinEst Smart Mobility project and the work was conducted by Forum Virium Helsinki.

There has been some interest from other countries, but Estonia was the first to truly commit to future cooperation and development of a common platform.

“This is very good news for all Digitransit users. In an open platform all development results will be shared with others, therefore it is to everyone’s benefit to have more partners who can participate in common development,” says Project Manager Jari Honkonen from Forum Virium Helsinki.

Maanteeamet is planning to introduce the new journey planner service in autumn with Digitransit. The open source Digitransit platform offers the same journey planning features that public transport customers have in major Finnish cities.

“We’re delighted to be starting technical and business cooperation, allowing us to benefit from Finnish knowledge and experience to deliver a new journey planner in Estonia with lower costs and a quicker timeframe. We’re looking forward to moving forward together with the Digitransit roadmap to offer our users an excellent customer experience,” says Kaspar Karm from Maanteeamet.

Digitransit is an open source software providing versatile features for smart cities. HSL Helsinki Region Transport authority, TVV LMJ Oy and Traficom have funded development so far and are hoping to see other parties utilise the code too. More information about how to start using it can be found in the project documentation: https://digitransit.fi/en/