The UK is on the cusp of a significant transport data revolution. The Open Transport Initiative, dubbed the “Open Banking for transport,” aims to leverage user-permissioned, interoperable data to unlock over £1.5 billion* in national value annually. This push for a Transport Smart Data scheme across the entire UK means a fundamental step change in efficiency, user experience, and the fight against carbon emissions across the nation’s transport network.
Despite the immense potential of such a scheme (touching 60 million travellers and nearly 800 billion passenger kilometres each year) the UK transport sector remains incredibly fragmented. Unlike financial services, our sector’s data:
- Operates in silos (typically locked by both the mode of travel and the initial technology choices made by a handful of large system suppliers)
- Lacks unified and adopted standards for interoperable customer account sharing**
- fails to comply with the mandatory requirement for GDPOR data portability.
This all makes system integration difficult, limits commercial confidence and creates significant barriers to market entry.
We want to change that!
The article written our own Marcus Mayers in Cities Today explains further what we are up against and our plans:
https://cities-today.com/uk-push-for-open-banking-for-transport-aims-to-unlock-1-5bn/
*The estimated £1.5 billion annual value comes from potential outcomes like: lower commuter costs, reduced emissions, and improved accessibility. For example, achieving just a two percent shift from car to rail could cut 1.6 million tonnes of emissions yearly, while a one percent network efficiency gain could save around £1 billion.
** Although we have created and published our own free Open API Specification for Customer data sharing to help such adoption: https://opentransport.co.uk/open-standard/
Open Transport - Transport & Mobility Data Interoperability 