Towards sustainability in multi-modal urban planners

Public transport systems in modern cities are the key to create the sustainable citizens' mobility of the future. In a short time the private vehicle will be needed only for transportations that public transport cannot be afforded. Supporting the use of the public transport in the cities is one of the main objectives planned by the European Union for next years. It is making an important effort to reach a decrease of twenty percent for emissions of greenhouse gases derived from urban mobility before 2020. However, for achieving this goal it is necessary to make a change in the perception that citizens have about transport systems. Current travel and journey planners may not consider some variables that may contribute to improve the perception of the citizens when they have to face mobility into the urban areas. Besides transport timetables, citizen schedules or travel costs, route planners have to improve both the quality of the proposed planned mobility and the performance of the public transportation system. We have studied different factors that have to be taken in consideration to develop new planners based not only on the optimization of time, costs, distance or the number of transport changes. We also consider other elements that can help to make the travel more comfortable to users such as knowing occupancy rates of vehicles in motion or the carbon footprint associated to the transport mode.