[iRail] Close encounters with NMBS and De Lijn

[Jan Fabry]

Hello iRail members,
Hello Sander and Bart (please read on to know why you got this mail too),

Today I briefly spoke with Roger Kesteloot, director-general of De Lijn, and Sabin s'Heeren, director NMBS Mobility, at the VVS congress about (student) mobility.

The main concern when sharing data is always quality. They want to be sure that the information the customer receives is of high quality. This was the reason the NMBS wanted to stop iRail: they try to make their own route planner as advanced as possible, with extra information about delays, splitting trains, work info, ... iRail scrapes this site, but if to does not parse (or even breaks) on the extra information, the end user will not get the full message from the NMBS, possibly resulting in incorrect information and an unhappy customer. And when the user stands on a cold and deserted platform, will they blame iRail for giving incorrect information, or the NMBS? Remember it was a customer complaint to the NMBS about the iRail website that resulted in the cease-and-desist letter.

Keeping that in mind, mr. s'Heeren did not see the sharing of information as something that is by default impossible. Some strategic information will never be shared, because the NMBS will face competition in the domestic market in the future (think 2015-2020). Examples are the more "technical" information, like the turnaround times of vehicles, staffing etc. But sharing "customer-facing" info would be less of a problem: he gave the example of TomTom, which would like to integrate train schedules with GPS navigation, so if you wanted to go to Brussels your GPS device might direct you to the train station instead of the nearest highway. This would have to be non-commercial use: TomTom would not make extra money for offering NMBS info. It is also controlled with an agreement between TomTom and the NMBS, so quality can be more or less guaranteed.

For these reasons, the NMBS and Infrabel are working on some form of data sharing. Mr. s'Heeren of course did not have much technical info on it, but I assume it would be a situation where you get a (not necessarily paying!) contract with the NMBS and they provide routing info via an API. This is not the same as just an open data dump of the timetables and a feed of delay info, and it would be limited by the need for a contract.

They do not see a need for further data sharing, because they already offer multiple ways themselves: the regular and mobile websites, SMS, the iPhone and Android apps, ...


De Lijn seems to be a step further: they already have some way of data sharing, they do this for no payment in case of non-commercial use, and I was suggested to contact Filip Brutsaert, sales manager (and Stubru listener? [ http://www.stubru.be/user/24539 ]). Apparently Sander Deryckere already contacted him (or his department) with the same question, but then for OpenStreetMap [ http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.openstreetmap.imports/270 ]. I read some promising things in that mail, and I would like to know whether Sander replied, so I put him in CC. Dynamic data like timetables are not a good match for static data like the OSM map, so not all issues might apply to us.

De Lijn currently offers a widget, but also requires an agreement to use it on your site. If you read the terms [ http://www.delijn.be/images/algemene_voorwaarden_gebruik_plug_in_tcm7-16532.pdf ], you notice that you can't use it in a commercial environment because their agreement with NAVTEQ does not allow it. However, I assume the NAVTEQ-data is only used for the walking directions, so this is probably a surmountable problem.

On the other hand, Bart Van Loon from The DataTank had an unsuccessful meeting with De Lijn a few months ago. I also CC'ed him so he can tell us what happened there.


I would like to explore the "De Lijn"-route further. We have the i-Vlaanderen roundtable coming up, and De Lijn is a simpler organization: smaller, mono-lingual, falling under a broader freedom of information act and an acting government. If we can open up data from De Lijn, this will set an example for the NMBS for how to do this with the community. Remember that the MIVB also has a working API, and Michaël Uyttersprot created an Android application together with them. Does anyone know more about that?


Greetings,

Jan Fabry