Routes to Davos

This week, the World Economic Forum holds their Annual Meeting in Swiss mountain resort Davos. routeRANK helps participants choosing their travel routes and the Forum to run a contest rewarding the greenest participants.

The World Economic Forum recognizes that its activities have an impact on the environment and view it as their responsibility to limit and reduce negative consequences. At the 2012 Annual Meeting, the Forum is pursuing the Greener Davos initiative, which was introduced two years ago to address participants’ concerns about the environmental impact.

About 90% of the total CO2 emissions are a result of participant and staff travel. Over 12,000 tonnes of CO2 are generated each year during the five-day meeting. Since 2005, the funds collected through carbon offsets have gone to compensation projects around the world.
Participants can compensate their own emissions by using a simple tool available online at www.davosclimatealliance.org or by visiting the Greener Davos Desk located on the Middle Level of the Congress Centre.

Developed by routeRANK, the exhibition tool also offers to compare the different modes of transportation and help participants choose the greenest route to Davos. A contest will reward the five greenest participants who use the most environmentally friendly option to travel to the Annual Meeting, the prize being a mobile solar charger.

In addition to compensating emissions, the Greener Davos initiative further addresses reduce overall traffic at the event and to restrict circulation to vehicles fulfilling environmentally friendly conditions.

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker praises impact on resource efficiency in time for the European Commission Mobility Challenge

routeRANK is honoured to announce the support of Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, currently Co-Chair of the UNEP’s International Resource Panel. With a view to his field of expertise he confirms: “routeRANK’s technology allows its users to improve their resource efficiency in travel and transport easily.”

His testimonial joins other illustrative quotes on routeRANK, including by Klaus Töpfer, former Executive Director of the UNEP, and more recently Simone Niggli, 17-time world champion in orienteering and expert authority on journey planning off the beaten tracks and outside the public transport jungle.

Such support bodes well for the European Commission ‘Smart Mobility Challenge’. “Why can’t I yet plan or book my journey through Europe – switching from air to rail or sea, to urban or road transport – in one single go and online?” asked Siim Kallas, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of transport. routeRANK is pleased to have responded to the challenge and to announce that the public version of its journey planner has been shortlisted for the public vote that the European Commission launches today. In this context, the Commission also plans to raise awareness among the general public about multi-modal travel planning.

You can vote for routeRANK by clicking on the button below and then following the instructions on the European Commission’s webpage:

Western Switzerland’s 150 and the ‘Suite 150′

As part of the many changes we made during the last month, the representation of routeRANK’s search results are now improved in different ways. For example, results with departure and arrival dates different from the user’s original search date are marked with different symbols and tool-tips. The working time, available as an additional criteria on the Standard Professional version, is now also calculated for groups travelling by car and shown as percentage of the total travel time. We have further updated our website with more information on routeRANK’s offering, in particular the different versions of routeRANK and how they compare.

‘Suite 150′, a club with Swiss companies that are at least 150 years old and still in existence today, and ‘Handelszeitung’ are offering the opportunity for the Swiss Top 100 startups to meet and obtain mentoring from managing board-members of the ‘Suite 150′. Also see the corresponding article on our press page for further details. routeRANK is looking forward to this opportunity.

The ‘PME Magazine’ surveys the Western Switzerland each year and presents the best new companies and their founders. In late October, routeRANK was honoured to be included in PME Magazine’s 150 new enterprises building Western Switzerland, together with other existing companies such as Nextthink, Prediggo, Aleva Neurotherapeutics and Kandou Technologies.

“routeRANK spares travellers orienteering in public transport”

We are happy to announce that routeRANK has gained the support of Simone Niggli-Luder, the 17-time world champion in orienteering. Drawing the parallel to her sports she confirms that “routeRANK spares travellers orienteering in public transport”.

Travelling from London to Lausanne, for example, there are thousands of possible routes: by air through multiple departure airports and into multiple arrival airports in Geneva, Bern-Belp or Zürich-Kloten, with multiple airlines connecting them, often multiple times a day, and with multiple airport transfer options for each of them; travelling by train all the way or driving by car are additional possibilities. Comparing them in terms of cost and environmental impact, as well as – crucially for orienteering athletes – overall travel time is tedious and consumes lots of planning effort.

As a first step, the routeRANK widget has already been installed on Simone Niggli-Luder’s homepage, with the default destination set to her hometown Münsingen. Simone’s testimonial can be found on routeRANK’s website.

Incidentally Lausanne, where routeRANK is headquartered, will be host to the World Orienteering Championships next summer. routeRANK hopes to be able to help athletes participating in the event, so that they easily get there in the first place and can focus their energy and skills on the actual competition.

On a different topic, the Swiss ICT journal featured routeRANK in its early October issue. For more details, please refer to our press page. routeRANK was also included in the Swiss Top 100 startups 2011. We currently show on position 53 among the 200,000 or so startups since 2006.

Last but not least, we have worked on further improvements and the fine tuning of routeRANK’s flight filtering, so as to show a selection of routes that is even more relevant to the user. As usual, this takes into account the different priorities and trade-offs, such as the cost, travel time, changeovers and carbon emissions. Please give it a try on your upcoming trips and let us have your thoughts. Your opinion and feedback are always appreciated.

Recent news and extended flight coverage

Last Friday, Swiss business magazine Bilanz published an article about routeRANK’s role in corporate travel, accompanied by an interview with routeRANK founder and chairman Jochen Mundinger. The latter is available on Bilanz’s homepage, the full article can be found on the press page.

We are pleased that routeRANK is now part of school teaching material as well. Swiss publisher HEP uses routeRANK in educational material aimed at teaching students about mobility and CO2 emissions. The material includes an exercise on routeRANK, instructing students to search for, compare and select ‘good’ connections, allowing them to learn how to make informed travel choices. The teaching material is already available in German, with a French version being published in October 2011.

As always, we have worked on improvements and extensions. The most noticeable on the public version is the integration of new flight connections through Momondo, a leading flight search engine that includes more than 700 airlines and 200+ travel agencies for the cheapest and best tickets. This offers routeRANK’s users excellent flight coverage worldwide and booking in English, French, German and Spanish, as usual directly with the relevant provider. For example, try the trip from Berne to London.

We have also updated the public website with more information in the FAQ and the HowTo sections, as well as the standard professional version for small and medium enterprises.

Jochen Mundinger’s talk at the TEDxRigi event mentioned in our last blog post is now available online. You can watch it together with the other presentations on YouTube.

An active month for routeRANK

Last month routeRANK released a new standardized professional version of its travel planning solution to meet the demand by small and mid-size companies. This was picked up by LeTemps , amongst others. Similarly, routeRANK’s presentation at the EU Parliament on June 1st, 2011, was covered by VentureLab.ch. Find this and more articles on our press page.

routeRANK’s founder, Jochen Mundinger, also participated at last month’s TEDxRigi event with the theme ‘Global Caring Connections’, speaking on ‘Transport connections’.

Following on from last year’s collaboration, routeRANK works again with Paléo Festival this year to guide visitors to the festival. Travelling causes a substantial part of the festival’s CO2 emission and the Paléo organizers wish to provide and promote sustainable means of reaching the festival to reduce the environmental impact of the event. This year the solution also integrates the NStMC trains that get you right to the festival station (Asse) as well as the additional Paléo buses by Car Postal. This allows visitors to find the overall most convenient, cheapest and greenest way to the festival. Information on routes and schedules can be accessed through the routeRANK widget on the Paléo website from next week.

This year, Paléo Festival takes place from the 19th to the 24th of July. It is Switzerland’s biggest open-air festival and one of Europe’s most important musical events. Each year nearly 200 concerts and shows are offered to the 230,000 spectators who fill the Festival’s site, situated above the town of Nyon. To this day, over 4.7 million people participated. routeRANK is proud to be one of Paléo’s partners and wishes wishes all visitors, actors and supporters a great festival.

routeRANK in the European Parliament

Following the recent article in the newsletter of the European Parliament Intergroup on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development, routeRANK’s founder and Chairman Jochen Mundinger will participate in the meeting “The Future of Transport: Discussion on the EC White Paper” taking place in the European Parliament in Brussels today, June 1st.

Big Think, a US-based knowledge forum, presented routeRANK as one of their ‘big ideas’ in our digital age. It finds that more and more, efficiency is measured in terms of the carbon footprint and that ‘routeRANK’s technology has the potential to redefine the way we travel‘.

Meanwhile, routeRANK is preparing to launch a new standardized professional version. This is due to demand by smaller and mid-size companies that do not deploy corporate travel solutions and that would like to provide their employees with the tools for time- and cost-efficient travel planning while also informing about the carbon impact at the same time.

Spring news from routeRANK

The routeRANK Team hopes you all had a great Easter holiday. We have been working on a number of new features for routeRANK and are releasing the time filters from our private beta version to the public version today. Also see the earlier blog entry.

We have also recently updated our career page with more detailed information. If you are among those strong developers with deep passion in innovation and technology, and who want to make real impact, we are always keen on hearing from you.

Touring Club Suisse wrote about routeRANK last month, in an article on fast and ecological traveling “Voyagez rapide et écolo”. Read what they said and find other press articles on our press page. You can also look at a recent interview by TV blog “Greenings” with routeRANK’s founder Jochen Mundinger, on YouTube or on the Greenings blog.

New features on routeRANK

The routeRANK team has been working on putting the final touches on a number of new features.

It is now possible to specify a number of up to four travelers when searching for routes, with consequences for prices and CO2 emissions in particular. While often trains stay the most ecological means of transport, even when traveling in a group of 4, say, a full car tends to cause less CO2 emissions per person than using a route that involves a flight. You can try this new feature in a pre-release beta version on the private routeRANK website.

When planning a trip involving several means of transports or several layovers, did you ever wonder how likely it would be for you to miss any one of your connections? For trips, which include flights, this question is a particularly relevant. There is always a certain risk of missing your flight in the case that your train connection to the airport has a delay or doesn’t work out. Or maybe you get stuck in a huge traffic jam while taking your car to the airport. A new routeRANK feature addresses exactly this problem. For each route, routeRANK now estimates the risks this route and each of its legs pose with respect to missing a connection. For business travel, which is usually subject to significant time constraints, knowing the risks associated to different travel routes is a prerequisite for making an informed choice. If you are interested in a customized version of routeRANK’s core patent-pending technology, which now includes the ability of assessing travel risks, please see the business applications page or contact us for further information. You can also try this new feature on our private routeRANK version.

There are also a number of improvements to the public routeRANK version. For car results routeRANK now directly forwards you to the relevant page on ViaMichelin. As you are already used to from air and rail results, you can immediately review the corresponding driving details and follow your car route on a map without having to enter the origin and destination yourself. In addition, routeRANK now also covers the stops serviced by PostBus Switzerland and is working on adding even more bus stops in Switzerland. Within Switzerland the PostBus network efficiently connects even the most remote places to the national train network. Accordingly, routeRANK now finds public transport connections for even more routes.

routeRANK with improved filters and updated geographic data

In the context of this year’s NATUR congress, routeRANK had been nominated for the Prix NATURE Swisscanto in the category “Future Generation”. The award ceremony was held at the Gala in Basel earlier this month. Our congratulations to the winners UrbanFarmers, as well as musician Andres Andrekson (Stress) and the organisation for development co-operation Helvetas.

Meanwhile the routeRANK team has been working on further improving the results options. In particular, the filters that allow choosing periods for departure and arrival times, limiting number of flight layovers, and specifying maximal values for the overall travel price, duration and CO2 emissions have been enhanced further. They can be tested on the private routeRANK version. In addition, to optimize its geographical coverage, routeRANK has updated and expanded its location data. We hope this will help people in even more places to find travel routes starting right from their doorstep.