Many applications look at private transport and public transport as separate entities, as both types of transport are based on different principles in terms of their definition of supply and their procedures. For demand assignment in PrT, the demand segments are assigned to a mode of the type PrT, which corresponds to a mode of transport (e.g. car). In PuT, the demand segments are assigned to a mode of the type PuT, which corresponds to a transport system (e.g. train, bus, tram).
Multimodal applications, however, consider paths, whereby an overall path consists of several paths that can be used with different modes. An example would be a flight passenger traveling by train to the airport, who after arriving at his destination airport, uses a rental car to continue his journey. Similarly, there are trip chains in freight transport, where several modes (e.g. truck, rail, ship) are used. The fact that modes of different types can be used distinguishes multimodal applications from PuT applications, where path legs are covered by different modes, but are represented by PuT auxiliary or sharing systems.
The "multimodal” user model is closely linked to the mechanisms of PrT and PuT. The following section, however, only describes the connections and procedures that support multimodal applications.
