Aiming for Passenger Interoperability

Offering comfortable mobility It is now widely realized that information promotes movement and mobility. The recent development of broadband Internet services makes us to access a very large amount of information quickly and easily. Despite this easy access to information, the number of international meetings and conferences is st i l l increasing, suggesting that when people get some information, they want to visit places and meet people. Even if some new information technology (IT) can handle smell and taste, it is doubtful that this basic human tendency to congregate would change. It seems that as people acquire knowledge, they want to travel to acquire more information. Eliminating the inconveniences in changing the modes of transport is an essential part of providing our mobile society with pleasant and efficient travel. One of the advantages o f us ing a u t o m o b i l e s i s a d o o rt o d o o r convenience, but long-distance and overseas travel will always require changes of transport mode. Several attempts were made in the past to facilitate changes between transport modes. Typical examples are flying boats and seaplanes that combine the functions of airplanes and ships, or road trains that create linked truck convoys running on roads, or train ferries that link trains and ships. However, such technologies have yet to become mainstream transport modes probably because our present-day transport modes have developed over many years into higher efficienfcy on the basis of core hardware technologies that h a v e v e r y l i t t l e f u n d a m e n t a l compatibility. As a result, the concept of hardwarebased intermodality between present-day transport modes may be flawed. But if we can offer people easy access to software-based effective information for smooth intermodal transfer, it will be possible to make travel on different modes of transport easier.