[Open-transport] Open Data Public Transport List?

Thu Jul 18 12:45:44 UTC 2013

On 18 Jul 2013, at 14:01, Stefan de Konink <stefan at konink.de> wrote:

> Could you please elaborate why interopability between API's from different regions is important. You seem te advocate that open data public transport is something like building a view on an existing system. While what most transit developers require is the freedom to have access to the raw data behind it.
> 
> So are you advocating for open data api's were you can fetch raw data from, such as Networkrail, or more like a documented API to a route planner like Dutch Rail provides?

I'm not advocating anything. Both are important in my opinion.

In an ideal world there'd be a service where one can retrieve any public transport authorities' data as raw if you're a raw data person or a small portion of it (which stations are around this geo location, what departs when from this station) if you're a small data person such as a mobile app developer. Different developers have different needs, so both should be covered. Obviously I understand that it is easier to turn raw data into small data but not as easy to do so vice versa.

We don't live in an ideal world at the moment, the truth is that transport authorities provide open data in what ever format suits them (if at all) and we need to take that into account. In my dealings with Austrian transport authorities I've experienced that they are much more willing to provide access to their APIs and refuse access to their raw data. Vienna will be going open data in September (http://www.offene-oeffis.at/2013/06/27/ogd-wien-wiener-linien-zusammenfassung/, German) but will not be providing access to their raw data. They will be using the MDV API. A few developers are now discussing building an MDV scrapper to extract the data and turn it into a more raw format for people that want this. Other developers like myself that wrote apps for public transport open data in Linz, which also is open data and uses the MDV API, are getting ready to bring their open data apps to this new region too - but only because we read the Austrian press release. I'm pretty sure this reached pretty few people globally. 

All I'm suggesting is that we should take inventory of what we currently have as this would help developers and people talking to officials.

Patrick
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