Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the transport and mobility sector are increasing, despite global agreements to reach net zero emissions by 2050. In 2022, global CO2 emissions from transport grew by more than 250 Megatonnes, reaching 8 Gigatonnes in total. https://www.iea.org/energy-system/transport

The sector therefore has the responsibility to decarbonise, quickly.
(And like all good transport analogies, this transition needs a roadmap.).

Unfortunately, the transport and mobility sector’s roadmap to reach net zero emissions by 2050 isn’t an easy one. It will involve a major transformation of the way move people and goods. It will require a shift to cleaner fuels, more efficient vehicles, and a greater focus on public transportation and other sustainable modes of transport.

But this cannot happen without data (or put more frankly… no data, no decarbonisation).
Data can play a critical role in the transition to net zero transport in a number of ways, including:

• Operations: Using data to optimize transport providers’ routes and therefore reducing fuel consumption. For example, planning delivery routes in a way that minimizes the distance travelled.

• Operations: Using data to develop new technologies for decarbonizing the transport sector. For example, to develop new battery chemistries that could make electric vehicles more affordable and efficient.
• Change user behaviour: Using data to developing policies that discourage the use of high CO2 emitting modes of transport.
• Change user behaviour: Using data to incentivise the use of low-carbon transport options.

Sharing data can further help with the transition to Net Zero for the sector by both:

1. Making it easier for different authorities to collect, analyse, and share (anonymised user) data
2. Allowing users to securely share the multiple sources of information that they have in their individual transport accounts, to help them plan and use less co2

If you would like to join or know more about the work of the Open Transport Initiative please contact us: 
contact@opentransport.co.uk

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation in the European Union (EU) that outlines the rights of individuals with regards to their personal data. The UK’s implementation of the GDPR is the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018). The DPA 2018 is very similar to the GDPR and sets out the same rights for individuals and obligations for organizations.

One of the rights that the GDPR provides is the right to data portability. This right allows individuals to request that the data controller (the entity that collects and processes their personal data) provides them with a copy of their personal data in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format. Individuals can also request that the data controller transmit their personal data directly to another data controller, if technically feasible.

In fact, Data controllers are encouraged by the legislation to develop interoperable formats that enable data portability.

For the transport sector, this means that a customer has the right to move, copy or transfer personal data easily out of an account for one provider mobility and into another … in safe and secure way, without affecting its usability and ‘without hindrance’.

Our Open Standard API specification for exchanging data between different transport & mobility accounts uses JSON – a structured, commonly-used and machine readable format.
It therefore enables interoperability between each system, but without them all having to maintain compatibility with each other.

If you are a Data Controller or transport & mobility technology supplier and would like to know more, please contact us: contact@opentransport.co.uk

Our work has led us to creating the Open Standard for customer account data sharing across the transport & mobility sector. This allows any transport account to be able to securely share specific data (e.g. mobility products, journeys and travel discounts) with named & agreed third parties. It is similar in principle to other data sharing initiatives such as Open Banking and Open Finance, an overall technology named ‘Smart Data’ by the UK Government.

Decentralized or Sovereign data is a different approach, in that personal data does not reside in a number of different user accounts across an ecosystem. Instead, this data sits in a Sovereign account controlled / managed by the customer and the user grants each party access to just the data they require.

Our approach enables a consolidated view of transport & mobility account data from different participating providers (either in one or more accounts, including third party ones). Whereas the decentralised approach uses an additional account, typically called a Mobility Data Space, to manage all the user’s transport data in a single location (with the transport providers potentially seeing far less data about the individual).

But….

Both are ways of sharing mobility data.

Both help the user to be in control of their own data and allow it to be viewed and used for better mobility outcomes – e.g. to plan and travel in faster, easier and greener ways.

Both rely on the exchange of non-personal transport data, such as: tickets purchased, usage made via each specific mode or vehicle and even the concessions the individual is allowed to use.

So why don’t they both use the same standard for the sharing of this same data?

Or put another way… why create a very similar customer mobility data sharing standard for Decentralized or Sovereign transport data when one already exists for shared / Smart transport data?

We would welcome the opportunity to work with any other organisation working on any sort of decentralized transport & mobility initiative.
contact@opentransport.co.uk

For the last few years, departments within the UK Government have been using the term ‘Smart Data’ to refer to the secure sharing of customer data with named / authorised third-party providers (TPPs), upon the customer’s request.

The concept started with Open Banking, but a wider adoption of Smart Data is now being implemented, starting with Open Finance and then the Open Energy, Open Telecoms / Open Telco and (hopefully) into Open Transport.

And recently the Smart Data Council has been set-up (taking forward the work of the Smart Data Working Group), with the aim of making it easier for more consumers and small businesses to switch providers of some utilities, therefore supporting families to save money.

Smart Data has its own place in the Data Spectrum, and in our version specifically for the Transport & Mobility sector, the types of data expected to be shared are:

• Transactions & tickets (e.g. products purchased or entitlements to travel)
• Journeys made
• Concessions or discounts

These are the data entities described in our Open Transport Customer-account API Specification: https://opentransport.co.uk/open-standard/

Our work on creating and managing the only customer account data sharing standard for transport & mobility (otherwise known as the Open Banking standard for transport) enables a customer’s mobility data to be shared with other Third Party Providers (TPP) via an Open Standard API: https://opentransport.co.uk/open-standard/

This integration of data is known as Smart Data by the UK Government and it sits in a specific area the Data Spectrum for Shared Data:

When fully implemented, this approach would allow customer mobility account interoperability across an entire transport ecosystem (e.g. a city, a geographic region or even an entire country). Allowing the travelling user to consolidate and view all their different transport products / purchases, journeys and entitlements data in a single place… the account or TPP of their choosing.

In an earlier post we also explained that, although similar to Shared / Smart Data, Decentralized or Sovereign data is different… in that personal data (including products / purchases, journeys and entitlements) does not reside in many different accounts across the ecosystem. Instead this data sits outside of each Transport Provider’s account and in a Sovereign account controlled / managed by the customer. Then, in a process similar to mobile phone account roaming, the user can (automatically or manually) grant each party in the ecosystem access to just the data they require.

The implementation of such an approach would result in the creation of Personal Online Data Spaces [PODS] for the sector, also known for as individual Mobility Data Spaces.

The UK Transport & mobility sector seems to have settled on a “good enough” approach to data sharing and interoperability.

This amounts to a reverse tragedy of the commons scenario across the sector, where every transport provider or authority deliberately under-invests in their own data sharing technology capabilities, as they see no point working for the collective good by making their systems more interoperable and sharable… because none of the other actors with the ecosystem are doing the same.

This creates the situation where the consumer of those services may not even be aware of the potential of a better mobility service and where the transport providers look for incremental revenue for themselves in non-data ways. Plus the transport providers in that ecosystem become accustomed to this technological stalemate, even if it could mean less potential revenue for the entire sector or a lack of overall innovation driven by data.

However we think this is the tragedy and that more needs to be done to encourage and force data sharing across the sector e.g. Open Data, Shared (and therefore limited by license), but especially that part of the data spectrum that makes named access customer data more sharable from provider to provider. To do this requires an ecosystem-wide strategy and implementation approach, where all players are encouraged or mandated to increased their own data sharing capabilities.

Today, our Founder Hayden Sutherland was invited to present at the inaugural OpenX Congress (https://www.openxcongress.com) run by https://openfuture.world – This was a 2 day event that covered the evolution from Open Banking to Cross-sector data sharing ecosystems.

During his presentation, Hayden explained about the complexities and intricacies of the fragmented UK transport & mobility sector and the newer challenges it faces as cities & regions race to adopt new account-based Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) systems… that create further silos of customer data.

And how individual transport providers and regional authorities & cities are still building and scaling-up their own “walled gardens” self-service accounts… with none of them interoperable with each other.

Hayden also went on to explain about how current GDPR “Rights of the Individual’ to data portability are currently ignored. And that Smart Data Government legislation, hopefully due sometime in the near future, should eventually facilitate the sharing of customer data across the transport & mobility sector.

The “CountEmissions EU” is an initiative that will offer a framework for calculating transport and logistics-related door-to door greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in a consistent way, regardless of transport mode, sector or country of operation.

The general objective of this initiative is to incentivise the reduction of emissions from transport and logistics,
through:

• establishing a level playing field for GHG emissions accounting in the transport and logistics sectors
• facilitating behavioural change.

The expectation is that this will improve the environmental performance of transport through specific objectives:

• providing a single EU framework for calculating GHG emissions data of transport operations/services
  in freight and passenger sectors
• making available reliable and comparable information on the GHG intensity of individual transport
  services
• facilitating the uptake of GHG emissions accounting in business practice.

We would therefore advise any organisation looking to see a consistent way of calculating and reporting GHG emissions across transport and logistics to add their thoughts and inputs.

Since Transportation is currently responsible for around 20% of all global CO2 emissions….
https://opentransport.co.uk/2020/11/09/joined-up-transport-data-has-net-zero-role/

… our hope is that this initiative will introduce a standard way of comparing data for both organisational and individual GHG emissions, creating greater transparency and enabling better emissions reporting, therefore leading to a reduction in global warming caused by the transport & mobility sector.

Personal Account Roaming for MaaS is the ability to use one user account across multiple Mobility-as-a-Service offerings. It is the concept (similar to cellular phone roaming) that’s been proposed to solve the problem caused by different MaaS platforms being used across the same country, region or ecosystem.

It relies upon a user having their personal data stored separately from each MaaS application or transport provider and only specific data (e.g. journeys taken = usage) then exchanged. This functionality then allows the user to roam and link and unlink their own personal account with different transport & mobility services, as THEY want.

The concept, described as decentralized or sovereign data, is based around the principle that every user is in control of their own data and that any data stored outside of the personal is not specific to the individual. It also potentially means the non-personal data collected (e.g. aggregated system-wide usage) could still be used by the MaaS platform to improve its operations and even shared externally as publicly-accessible Open Data, (assuming it completely anonymises the user).

However the decentralized / personal account cannot integrate with each different MaaS platform in different ways, this would create huge amounts of unnecessary work. Therefore some form of data sharing standardisation is needed for MaaS account roaming to work correctly, ideally in the form of an API specification.

The Open Transport Initiative has designed and published an Open Standard API specification for the sharing of those data entities needed in a decentralized account roaming mobility ecosystem. This free-to-use technology standard allows different MaaS platforms to implement a consistent way of allowing decentralized personal accounts to integrate with them and share the necessary user data as they roam.

What specific types of data can be shared?

What Data Sharing is needed for MaaS?

The European Union has announced plans for a new Digital Markets Act (DMA) that could force changes at the big technology companies and legislate for them to make their messaging apps talk to each other.

Announced back at the end of March the DMA plans to ban certain practices by these “gatekeeper” companies (such as social networks or search engines with a market capitalisation of at least 75 billion euro or an annual turnover of 7.5 billion) who the EU says are most prone to these unfair business practices.

This means they could soon be forced to enable customers using one messaging app to send their messages to contacts who use other apps. For example, it would make it possible to send a message using Apple iMessage to another person using WhatsApp. Or someone on Google Hangouts (soon to be replaced by Google Chat) to message a friend on Facebook Messenger.

This message app interoperability and standardisation has been met with support by many in the sector, as this could mean an eventual move away from text-only SMS. It would also reduce barriers to market entry, as the big players would have to open up and work with smaller messaging platforms that requested it.

So if the messaging market is the next target for interoperability… when will transport and mobility accounts be able to integrate and share data?

Back in September 20202 the UK Government published the report titled “Next steps for Smart Data. Putting consumers and SMEs in control of their data and enabling innovation”.

In this document it cites the success of Open Banking and that UK Parliament will introduce primary legislation to make different sectors participate in Smart Data initiatives. But most importantly that this will extend to sectors such as retail and transport.
https://opentransport.co.uk/2020/09/21/open-transport-welcomes-legislation-to-mandate-transport-industry-participation-in-smart-data-initiatives/

So yes this does meant that, at the right time, there will be legislation created to make this shift happen. Assumed to be similar to the legislation used on the UK Banking sector several years ago, it is expected to insist that key transport authorities and mobility providers make their accounts able to share customer data via Open Standard APIs.

So hopefully, one day… we will have the same sort of interoperability between customer accounts for major transport providers, regional authorities and Mobility-as-a-Service platforms, as the EU is proposing between messaging Apps from Facebook, Google and Apple.

Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@the_average_tech_guy