At the time, where the IPTOP project was about to initiate, transport accounted for one-fifth of Denmark’s CO2 emissions; consequently, the 2009 Danish Green Transport Agreement required that public transport must attract a greater share of transport demand. Traditionally, the policy focus has been to increase the supply of public transport through investment in facilities. However, in 2013 the Danish Congestion Commission recommended that greater attention be given to coordination between separate transport providers so that existing services are more accessible, more reliable, and more attractive to travellers.
The Integrated Public Transport Optimisation and Planning project (IPTOP) directly addressed this objective through the development and application of innovative data analysis and mathematical optimisation. Addressing this objective, was enabled by the fact that recent technological changes made available vast amounts of data that warranted a fresh look at large scale optimisation methods and the integration of transport services. Further motivating the IPTOP project were the findings that significant contributions to the literature might be made in methods for global optimisation of passenger preferences and operational constraints (Parbo et al, 2014a).
IPTOP leveraged today’s better understanding of traveller data and preferences (Anderson, 2013) so that public transport may become faster, more reliable, more customer focused, and yet provided efficiently at reasonable cost.
Many countries have similar needs and organizational set-up of public transport, thus the results of IPTOP are relevant to a global audience.
IPTOP was well positioned to achieve its objectives due to strong relations with transport providers and international research authorities.