[iRail] Close encounters with NMBS and De Lijn

[Sander Deryckere]

Hi,

My contacts with de lijn were unsuccessful. The problem was indeed that de
lijn wanted to be sure the user achieved accurate data. OSM could not
guarantee that, so de lijn did not answer to our question.  The second
problem with OSM for de lijn was that OSM could not host the timetables,
only the geographical information. Maybe this problem will be solved when
transiki gets launched.

I don't know if peter dedecker is already an iRail member, but if he isn't,
he is a politician with an open IT mind, he might be able to help you with
lobbying.

Op 4 dec 2010 17:39 schreef "Jan Fabry" <jan.fabry at monkeyman.be>:

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
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