The first European Mobility Challenge, launched by the Commission's Vice-President Siim Kallas, has started with the public vote in order to find the best electronic journey planner. The main aim of this contest is to raise awareness about and stimulate development of all-in-one journey planners, going beyond national borders and offering alternative transport modes.

The European Commission has openeda public vote to the contest announced last June on citizens favourite multimodal journey planner. According to Vice-President and Commissioner for Mobility and Transport, Siim Kallas, the idea behind the challenge is to raise awareness about and stimulate development of all-in-one journey planners, going beyond national borders and offering alternative transport modes. At the contest, 28 examples of journey planners were submitted and 22 new innovative ideas. Unfortunately not all submitted planners could satisfy the strict cross-border and multimodal requirements.

The transport sector faces many challenges such as increasing congestion, fuel costs and climate change require that we look for and find smarter ways to travel. More multimodal travel, using different types of transport as part of one door-to-door journey, is part of the answer. Although more than 100 journey planners already exist, there is not even one yet that would allow European citizens to find information or book a ticket for the entire journey within Europe regardless of the number of countries or transport modes involved.

The public vote will be opened until 13 January 2012 through the updated challenge webpage, where the citizens are able to choose among one of the 12 short-listed planners. In parallel, an expert jury will meet to deliberate on the submitted ideas. The best entries in each category will be announced in February 2012. As a prize, the winners in each category will be invited to next year's ITS World Congress in Vienna (22-26 October 2012) to present their ideas and solutions at the Commission's stand.