Intermodal settings

Roles: Super Admin

In the Intermodal settings section in the management settings of a product, you can configure the product feature intermodal journeys.

Intermodal solutions combine a DRT trip with a public transport trip. They are one of the three solution types—DRT-only, intermodal, and public transport-only—that are assembled, sorted, and ordered by the multiple booking solutions settings before results are presented to the passenger. The fields in this section control how intermodal ride variants are generated and how transfer times between the DRT leg and the public transport leg are handled. They do not determine which feeder stations are used: feeder-station selection is based on the PT to DRT feeder and DRT to PT feeder station flags and geographic proximity, and happens before these settings are applied.

The public transport leg of an intermodal journey comes from a feeder connection, so intermodal journeys also require the public transport alternatives feature to be configured. Each feeder connection produces one candidate ride variant, which is then filtered by the settings below.

If the product feature intermodal journeys is not activated, the following warning message is displayed below the title of this section in Control Center:

Feature not enabled: Changes to the setting(s) below will not take effect unless this feature is enabled

The following fields can be configured.

Desired ride variants

This field defines the preferred type of ride variant. It sets the order in which the built variants are prioritized, so that the variants that best fit the chosen strategy are the ones kept when the Number of analyzed ride variants limit is applied. It does not affect which feeder stations are selected. The default is Long PT Hop.

Long DRT Hop

If this is selected, ioki Platform prioritizes ride variants where the DRT hop is rather long and the PT hop is rather short.

Long PT Hop

If this is selected, ioki Platform prioritizes ride variants where the PT hop is rather long and the DRT hop is rather short.

Number of analyzed ride variants

This defines how many intermodal ride variants ioki Platform analyzes for a request. The value ranges from 1 to 10, and the default is 3.

A ride variant is one candidate way to split an intermodal trip into a DRT portion and a public transport feeder connection. For a single request, ioki Platform first builds every feasible variant:

  • one DRT-only variant, where the shuttle serves the whole trip, and
  • one variant for each usable first-mile or last-mile feeder connection, where public transport covers one end of the trip and the shuttle covers the rest.

When more variants are built than this setting allows, only the highest-priority variants are kept, up to this number, and the rest are discarded before matching. Two other settings on this page shape which variants are kept:

  • Preserve DRT ride variant. When enabled, the DRT-only variant is always kept and counts toward this number. For example, with the number set to 3 and this option enabled, the DRT-only variant plus the two highest-priority intermodal variants are analyzed.
  • Desired ride variants. Sets the order in which the remaining variants are prioritized, so the variants that best fit the chosen strategy are the ones kept.

A higher number analyzes more intermodal combinations, which can surface more options but takes longer to compute. A lower number analyzes fewer combinations and is faster, but it may leave out otherwise valid options.

Preserve DRT ride variant

If this option is enabled, ioki Platform adds the DRT-only ride variant to the number of analyzed ride variants right away and logs the message “Preserving DRT-DRT ride variant” in the matching logs. This option is enabled by default.

Additional PT to DRT Change Buffer Time

This parameter specifies the additional time required for a passenger to transfer from a public transport service to a DRT service. It ensures that the scheduling and matching algorithms take this transition time into account when planning rides.

The value is set in minutes and seconds and ranges from 0:00 to 15:00, in 15-second steps. The default is 1:00 (60 seconds).

Additional DRT to PT Change Buffer Time

This parameter specifies the additional time required for a passenger to transfer from a DRT service to a public transport service. It ensures that the scheduling and matching algorithms take this transition time into account when planning rides.

The value is set in minutes and seconds and ranges from 0:00 to 15:00, in 15-second steps. The default is 1:00 (60 seconds).