New search engine – new opportunities
Published 18 November 2010
Last modified 3 June 2019
Planning your travel by public transport is very easy owing to the new Warsaw Transport Authority search engine implemented within the CAPRICE project. ZTM employees spent many months to prepare and launch this new facility for passengers.
The search engine which makes travelling within the Warsaw conurbation and the part of Europe easy should not be treated as a “ready” product. ZTM is working all the time to improve it – we are planning to extend the searching range and to introduce the timetables of local suburb lines of the Integrated Ticket validity as well as the opportunity of planning travels by Koleje Mazowieckie (Masovian Railways) trains.
A demo version of the search engine appeared between 2007 and 2008, when ZTM was submitting the application to participate in the INTERREG IVC program – the CAPRICE project. The decision about its implementation was made in September 2008 when the participation in the program was certain. Owing to the CAPRICE project, it has become possible to obtain the subsidy from the European Union and implement the new “travel assistant”.
The first works on implementation of the search engine onto the website were started in May 2009. Several ZTM employees from departments: transport development, technology development, information technology, communications system analysis, transport planning, ticket purchase and promotion were participating in preparing the project. The most important details were arranged during the meetings with the supplier of the whole technology – the HaCon company from Hanover.
While working on the project, many problems had to be solved. They were connected with adjusting the software to the ZTM specificity. One of the reasons why adjusting the search engine to the Warsaw needs had taken a few months was the fact that HAFAS was originally designed as a railway tool and timetables of public transport are created in another way and have their own specificity.
The first version of the search engine was prepared at the end of 2009. The internal tests of this new tool took half a year. The errors were detected and corrected systematically. Among others, the problem with converting a timetable into a format “readable” for the search engine. The issues connected with printing timetables were also corrected.
Since June, 29 all passengers have been able to test the search engine themselves and comment on it sending their remarks to the address wyszukiwarka@ztm.waw.pl. Passengers’ opinions are very important for us because they allow us to eliminate defects and adjust the tool to their needs and expectations. At the end of the one-year long pilot period ZTM will make the final decision about target implementation of the search engine.
The search engine has been implemented due to participation of ZTM in the CAPRICE project (CAPital Regions Integrating Collective transport for increased energy Efficiency), which is co-financed within the INTERREG IVC program. It was approved by the European Union in September 2008. It is worth mentioning that the project was chosen to be co-financed by the European Union within the competition as a result of which only 41 out of 400 projects were approved!
The project lasts 3 years until the year 2011. It enables 5 partners from all over Europe to work together and exchange their expertise. Among them: the traffic association VBB Berlin-Brandenburg (the lead partner of the project), the Municipality of Bucharest (PMB), the Public Transport Authority in Vilnius (MESP-Vilnius), the Warsaw Public Transport Authority (ZTM-Warsaw) and the public transport authority for Paris and the Île de France Region (STIF-Paris).
The objective of CAPRICE is to exchange experience between public transport authorities, regional and local authorities and public transport operators. Within the project good communications practices will also be promoted.
