Earlier this week Open Transport initiative’s Chair, Hayden Sutherland, was invited to participate in a Webinar with Marie Walker, Founder & Head of Content, Open Banking World Congress.
https://info.finance-edge.com/blog/an-introduction-to-the-open-transport-initiative-webinar

In this webinar he talks about the work we have done so far and our plans for adoptions of the Open Standards across the transport and mobility industry.
https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/9975/382836

Hayden will also be speaking at the Open Banking World Congress 2020 on 12-13 May at Central Hall Westminster in London
https://openbankingworldcongress.com/agenda/

To help promote our work and raise awareness of our recent Open Standards for transport account interoperability… Open Transport is presenting at Transport Ticketing Global 2020.

The session is called:
“Open Transport: The future of Integrated Transport Customer Accounts”

And the outline is:
The Open Transport initiative has created and published Open Standards for transport account interoperability. These are now free to adopt and adapt by any organisation without cost or constraint. This session will cover the background of work done so far and the future plans & objectives of the initiative.

https://www.transport-ticketing.com/speakers

This session will take place in Smart Mobility Workshop Theatre on 29 Jan 2020 from 09:55 to 10:25

The TTG event takes place at Olympia in London on 28-29 January 2020

As the Open Transport initiative is getting more press coverage and attention, we have been asked to provide logos and brand assets to other sites & publications. Therefore we have decided to get the ones we already had updated in more detail and with consistent colours.

We therefore ask anyone using our logo (e.g. on a blog post or news article) to use these assets, or contact us for higher resolution versions contact@opentransport.co.uk

And special thanks to Karen Smith of KS Design for this great work.

Since the launch of version 1 of the Open Transport API specifications on Monday 3rd January 2020, there has been a lot of interest in our work.

Here’s a couple of news sites where we have been mentioned:

Intelligent Transport
Open Transport Initiative launches open standard for transport interoperability

Railway Gazette / Metro Report
Open standards launched to provide transport account interoperability

We are glad to announce that our two Open Transport API specifications have been submitted and accepted by ProgrammableWeb, the Web’s defacto journal of the API economy.

https://www.programmableweb.com/api/open-transport-initiative-uk-rest-api-v10

On our listing page we have explained that the Open Transport initiative provides two different Open Standard API specifications for free usage since v1.0:

1. Customer-account
A standard way to facilitate peer-to-peer transport data sharing and account interoperability, allowing the customer to combine all their transportation, mobility and associated data in one place. Including: purchase, concession, and usage features in addition to operators, transactions, latitude and longitude, vehicle, and discount data.

2. Operator-info
A centralised look-up for all transport operators. This provides a transport directory service with unique reference information about each mode of transport or mobility organisation, including any publicly available Customer-account API URLs.

Both specifications are Open Standards, meaning they have been made available on Swaggerhub for usage without conditions or fees.

Yesterday, Friday 3rd January 2020, was a pretty important day for the Open Transport initiative. Where we publicly launched two Open Standards for the benefit of the entire transport and mobility industry.

Therefore it was only fitting that we had a little celebration to mark the occasion. So we therefore invited a few transport and technology friends along to an evening in Glasgow last night.

Hayden Sutherland, Open Transport Standards Committee Chair said at the event “I would like to thank everyone one who has either contributed to the creation of these standards or provided their support at any point. These are specifications that the transport industry has needed for some while. So by giving them away as an Open Standard, we now hope they are adopted much quicker”

Today is an important date for the Open Transport initiative, with the official launch of Version 1 of the Open Transport Application Programming Interface (API) specifications and their conversion to an Open Standard.

Our full Press Release can be viewed online here:
https://www.prfire.com/submission/open-transport-now-open-for-business/

If you would like to know more: contact@opentransport.co.uk

As we start a new year (and also a new decade) some entrepreneurs and innovative types will be thinking about novel ideas and approaches to transportation for the year(s) ahead. And quite possibly utilising modern technology and maybe even a micro-mobility solution.
Therefore perhaps Hayden’s idea of a solar-powered skateboard start-up in Glasgow might eventually become a reality. But we significantly doubt it! 🙂

So if you’re looking to launch a new transport provider or mobility service, here are a few questions you should be asking yourself:

1. Are you planning to create an online account to enable your customers to self-serve? (e.g. to register, log in, check their status, view their usage and pay)
2. Are you expecting that at some (any) point in the future your transport service will be part of a wider and integrated mobility platform or proposition?
3. Would it be beneficial to any of your customers to have an end-to-end view of all their transport contracts and usage

If the answer to any of these three questions if “yes”, the perhaps you should consider adopting the Open Transport account interoperability standard from the beginning. And then implementing this as an API, so that important (non personal) data such as ticketing, journey and discount information can be exchanged.
The details are available to view here and from 3rd January 2020 this will be an Open Standards, able to be used without cost.

Plus… if you are serious about your Transport Service account API being found, you could register it with our centralised transport operator API look-up service too.
For more details contact: hayden@opentransport.co.uk

The Open Transport initiative has made some great progress so far. With a range of different transport and data specialists providing feedback on our draft API specifications until the peer review period closed recently.

It therefore looks like we will be able to create a first complete version of our API specifications as-planned for the beginning of January 2020.

So to celebrate the fantastic progress so far and get ready for the coming months… we will be having a launch event in Glasgow on Friday 3rd January 2020.

If you are involved in the transport or data sectors and would like to come along… just contact hayden@opentransport.co.uk

ABT is the acronym for Account Based Ticketing (or Account Based Travel, to give it a more appropriate name). This is the concept where customers use a central “back office” account for transport, rather than buy individual tickets in advance.

This account allows either pre-pay functionality (where the customer adds funds to the account beforehand and journeys are then subtracted as they travel) or post-pay (where journeys are made and the customer is then subsequently billed for their usage).

Both of these options can also be used alongside:

1. A “best fare” promise, where the customer is only charged the minimum possible amount over a travelling time period (e.g. a day, a week or longer).

2. A multi-modal proposition, where journeys across several modes of transport (e.f. bus, train, subway and even ferry) all get charged back to the same account

In fact, several of the founding members of the Open Transport initiative have experience of delivering an ABT project. Meaning they have first-hand knowledge of both the effort needed to design & implement such a scheme… as well as the potential benefits of such a service too.

And this, in part is why the Open Transport initiative was created. As our founders saw yet another transport system being created that locked Authorities and Transport Providers into a proprietary technology standard or vendor. Meaning that even more silos of customer mobility account & usage information were generated.

And that’s why we are now about to give away all the work we have done in creating a transport account interoperability standard. Why we are creating an Open Standard for mobility accounts to unlock the data held within them, rather than perpetuate the increasing lock-in that could happen as more and more ABT schemes are demanded and supplied.