What next for open transport data?

Working Groups Open Transport
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Let’s say a transport organisation is openly publishing GTFS, GTFS-RT and bulk downloads for GTFS-RT.

Is that “job done” or is there more open public transport data that could be useful for commuters?

What’s next for open transport data? What other datasets would be useful?

  • location of ticket retailers
  • fares and fines
  • patronage / real-time occupancy
  • complements, complaints and customer satisfaction
  • performance data e.g. raw data to produce these types of reports.
  • service alerts and planned changes.
  • park and ride availability
  • accessibility information e.g. pram / wheelchair access, on-board visual or aural announcements.
  • station facilities e.g. toilets, showers, bike storage, lockers, etc.
3 Likes
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We’re working on accessibility data right now!

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What aspects of accessibility are you exploring?

  • accessibility to the transport network (e.g. walking distance to stops)
  • facilities at stops (e.g. ramps, unisex accessible toilet, wheelchair access parking)
  • on board services (e.g. wheelchair accessible bus, announcements)

Do you know if there is a common standard for public transport accessibility data?

I found some attributes in the GTFS specification:

  • wheelchair_boarding in stops.txt
  • wheelchair_accessible in trips.txt
  • stop_headsign in stop_times.txt

But in my opinion they fall short of what’s needed.

For a broader view of some data that could be captured, see:

It would be great if their was a global standard for this sort of data.

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For those who has real-time occupancy-systems, APC - Automatic Passenger Counting, the data should be available. Ruter, the public company in charge of public transport in Oslo, Norway, made this data available through their API in the fall of 2014. They made it available before they started displaying this information in their own apps. For privacy, the occupancy is rounded to the nearest 20% (e.g. 20%, 40%, 60%…)

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We’ve also made a start on accessibility. We’re capturing our work here Home · ODIQueensland/ocd-standards Wiki · GitHub

@pietercolpaert is there anything you can share? I’d hate to reinvent the wheel :slightly_smiling_face: