[Open-transport] Open Transport Data tools / webservices

Mon Jul 15 10:36:43 UTC 2013

Hi Pieter,

Thank you for posting an interesting question.

Probably the most comprehensive (and therefore complex) API currently available would be Journey Web: “The protocol is a UK national de facto standard sponsored by the UK Department of Transport<http://www.dft.gov.uk/> and is being used<http://www.dft.gov.uk/journeyweb/implementations.htm> in the Transport Direct Portal<http://www.transportdirect.info/> project”.  See http://www.dft.gov.uk/journeyweb/ for more details and the 200 page schema document http://www.dft.gov.uk/journeyweb/schema/2.4c/doc/JourneyWeb-2.4c-draft-23.pdf  It isn’t strictly speaking “Open”, but pretty close: “The JourneyWeb XML schema and documentation is Crown Copyright, managed by the UK Department for Transport. The JourneyWeb Schema and documentation may be used without charge under a perpetual, non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty-free Licence. See the JourneyWeb site for Terms & Conditions of use.” Personally, having worked with it for over 10 years, I wouldn’t recommend it to be adopted as a global standard!

If you are after something a bit easier to work with, I am the product manager for a commercial API product that converts “raw transport data into an API”: http://www.jeppesen.com/journeyplanner
It is not “open” in the strictest definition, as it is a commercial product, but it is open in the sense that:

·         You can sign up<http://www.jeppesen.com/main/corporate/land/journey-planning/signup.jsp> for a free developer API key and start developing against the product right away

·         You can use the developer demo<http://www.jeppesen.com/main/corporate/land/journey-planning/demo.jsp> right now without signing up to see it in action and see the RESTful request and JSON Response.

·         You can download our RESTful API documentation<http://www.jeppesen.com/main/corporate/documents/land/Jeppesen-Journey-Planner-Interface-Overview-REST.pdf>

·         You can access the online help page<http://journeyplanner.jeppesen.com/JourneyPlanner/Help/> for the SOAP API and you can immediately bind your SOAP application to the latest WSDL<http://journeyplanner.jeppesen.com/JourneyPlanner/WSDL/>       .

It is a global hosted public transport journey planning product which offers full multi-modal journey planning, including walking and driving, in currently 101 public transport data sets aggregated into 56 geographic regions around the world. This API solution is used both by local public transport authorities and also by a growing community of mobile and web application developers.

I would be interested in opening a debate on making our Jeppesen Journey Planner API an Open standard. As it stands, is it the sort of thing you were looking for when you put out this request? What key features would you want supported?

Andrew Steele
Product Manager
Journey Planning
______________________________________
Jeppesen
A Boeing Company

ph: +44 16 28 50 90 30  | mobile: +44 78 81 78 86 64 | fax: +44 16 28 50 91 00 | www.jeppesen.com\journeyplanner<http://www.jeppesen.com/journeyplanner>

From: open-transport-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:open-transport-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Pieter Colpaert
Sent: 14 July 2013 14:59
To: open-transport
Subject: [Open-transport] Open Transport Data tools / webservices

Hi all,

Seems like this has been an issue for quite a while: how do we turn raw transport data into an API and which format/vocabulary should this API adhere to?

* I have found a GTFS → API in nodejs over here: https://github.com/brendannee/node-gtfs
* There is also http://navitia.io who has plans to go open source.
* Open Trip Planner has an API as well.

Are open source open transport data tools stuff that our Open Transport working group should push for? Which one would you prefer rights now?

Kind regards,

Pieter
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