Brief Description
Via our programming interface (API) you can access our route planner
Open Journey Planner (OJP). The price information can also be used to show the expected costs for the journeys provided there.
Data and interfaces
Note: A description of how to access the APIs can be found here: Howto: Access our APIs with API Keys.
The most important data and interfaces:
Group travel planners (OJP) and price information: https://data.opentransportdata.swiss/group/journeyplanner
- Journey Planner:
- Open Journey Planner 2020 (aka OJP 1.0)
- Open Journey Planner 2.0 (aka OJP 2.0)
- Price Information:
Functional Description
In most cases, a change has to be made on public transport. If a customer wants to get from a geographical point A to a point B, they usually have to walk part of the journey and have to change between different modes of transport. The algorithms that do this are called route finding or routing.
During routing, the topology is usually read in on the basis of the timetable. Constraints are calculated and the routing algorithm then calculates an optimal route for each request based on various parameters.
Different optimisations can be made for the route search:
- Minimum distance
- Minimum costs
- Few tunnel routes
- As few changes as possible
- Prefer bus or train
- Fast changes
- Safe transfer
- Consideration of BeHig aspects
- Dining car/minibar
- Specific via
- Consideration of real-time information
It makes sense to implement different routing algorithms because different customers have different ideas about optimal routing.
We offer Open Journey Planner (OJP) as a routing service. In versions 1.0 and 2.0: OJP 2.0. If you have any problems using the interfaces, please visit our OJP – Best Practices page. In both versions, the OJP Sysrequest endpoint is the same and provides information about the OJP system.
With regard to price information, we provide two possible data formats:
- For tariff information, we provide the Open Sales and Distribution Model (OSDM) as a static ‘offline’ file.
- We also provide data from NOVA (the price information platform of the Swiss public transport system) as linked open data for tariff information: Alpha: Linked Open Data Test with NOVA data and stops
- The third way to retrieve fare information is with OJP Fares (Beta).
Explanations of terms
The most important terms are described in the descriptions of Real-time, Event and Forecast Data – Overview, Timetable data – overview and Master Data and Metadata – Overview.
Further information
- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/483488/strategy-to-find-your-best-route-via-public-transportation-only
- http://transport.okfn.org/2013/09/23/short-history-of-routes-computation/
- https://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.05140.pdf
- http://ad-publications.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/ESA_transferpatterns_BCEGHRV_2010.pdf