Presentation of James Wong, transport planner from NYC, expert at World Bank and speaker at the Open Transport Data Day

1. OPEN DATA IN TRANSPORT
Benefits, Risks and Case Studies
Presented by:
James Wong, AICP, Consultant
Vitaly Vlasov, Consultant
Oleg Petrov, World Bank

2. Agenda
• Open Data in Transport
• Case Studies from Global Cities
• Implementation
• Closing Thoughts
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3. OPEN DATA IN
TRANSPORTATION
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4. Transportation Data
• Traditional sources
• GIS base-layers
• Traffic counts
• Transit vehicle locations
• Toll and Fare-gate counts
• New technology provides
new data
• On-street and garage parking
space occupancy
• Bike-share station activity
• Crowd-sourced incident alerts
• Trip records for public/shared
transport (taxi, bike-share etc)
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5. Open Data
1. Availability and Access
• Data is available in the common and convenient format
• Data is free or for a fee tied to distribution costs
2. Reuse and Redistribution
• Allows for reuse and mixing with other datasets
3. Universal participation
• Civic and for-profit purposes are treated equally
Adapted from the Open Data Handbook (http://opendatahandbook.org)
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6. Examples of Open Transport Data
• Transit
• Maps and schedules (GTFS)
• Stop and station locations
• Real-time vehicle locations
• Traffic/Roads
• Road crashes
• Roadway features/classifications
• Walking
• Sidewalk inventory
• Wheelchair accessible ramps/sidewalks
• Cycling
• Bike facilities and preferred routes
• Location of bike share stations
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7. Why should data
be made open?
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8. “Government as a Platform”
• Agencies should focus on core competencies and direct
services offered.
• In doing so, certain data and information will be generated
• By releasing that data and information to the public, agencies
provide necessary ingredients for public innovation
• Civic hackers serve the same traveling public served by you
• What is the least amount of effort needed by government to
enable others to build on your services?
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9. What can open transport data lead to?
• Public-facing transport applications like journey planners,
real-time travel information
• Transport planning and analysis applications
• Technology to support new modes of transport (carshare,
bikeshare, dynamic dispatch, etc.)
• Third party involvement in transport information provision
• Freedom from proprietary data management systems and
services
• Informal planning coordination among public agencies
Adapted with permission
from Conveyal and ITP
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10. Benefits
• Positive image for agencies
• New services for customers
with no agency expense
• Improved customer experience
• Better accessibility for various
disabilities (hearing and visual
impairments)
• Better informed traveler
decisions can reduce
congestion and improve safety
(avoiding busy highways)
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11. Open Data promotes innovation
with low effort
Data Hub
Agency responds to
individual, custom
requests by
developer
All developers
can access
open GTFS
Agency
produces
GTFS and
opens it once.
Small subset of riders find this
specific tool useful.
Many riders access a diverse market of tools
powered by GTFS.
Too burdensome;
some developers
never participate
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12. Developer-Agency Relationship
Travelers
Citizens
People thinking about
riding transit
Developers
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13. Developer-Agency Relationship
AgenciesDevelopers
Travelers
Citizens
People thinking about
riding transit
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15. Quantitative Results:
Infrastructure Planning and Management
• Moscow, Russia - 2012
• open data about commuter patterns helped officials choose to
reroute 100 bus routes in order to avoid ~$1 billion in infrastructure
capacity expansion and replacement costs.
• New Jersey, United States – 2012
• Passenger flow data released to public, analyzed by third parties to
identify under-utilized stations. These were the basis for new
express service
Adapted from Open Data: Unlcking innovation and performance with liquid information.
McKinsey Global Institute, 2013
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16. Quantitative Results:
Optimized fleet investment/management
• California and Texas, United States – 2008
• Public budgeting with line-item information allowed citizens to identify
areas that needed scrutiny including underutilized fleet vehicle
purchases, leading to 15% fleet reduction
• Open data used by other public agencies for benchmarking on vehicle
spending usage, allowing for 5% savings in vehicle purchasing budget
Adapted from Open Data: Unlcking innovation and performance with liquid information.
McKinsey Global Institute, 2013
• European Potential
• Some 20% of truck trips are empty throughout
Europe (public and private enterprise). With open
data, new opportunities arise for better matching
empty trucks to demand for better utilization.
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17. Quantitative Results:
Better informed customer decision making
• Duluth, United States - 2008
• 12% increase in transit ridership after implementing trip planning
and real-time tracking through Google Transit project
• Price transparency for better mode decisions
• Savings in the US of up to $2,500/year for individuals using transit
Adapted from Open Data: Unlcking innovation and performance with liquid information.
McKinsey Global Institute, 2013
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18. Risk Potential and Remedies
• Incorrect information published
• Using live data feeds allows for corrections made at the source to
cascade to active data users.
• Maintain mailing lists/contact forums for data users
• Data becomes out-of-date
• Set expiration dates on data and plan to take down information
• Old data may be worse than no data at all if it gives wrong
information
• Errors by developers are perceived as agency errors
• Include disclaimers and consider restrictions on naming
conventions to avoid confusion with agencies
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19. EXAMPLES AND
EXPERIENCES IN
PEER GLOBAL CITIES
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20. Bikeshare Data
Developer Community Activity –
• station locators
• empty station predictor
• analysis of travel time benefits
• new modes in trip planners
Example Cities:
• New York, USA
• London, UK
• Washington, DC
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21. Traffic and Bicycle Counts
WayCount - Private company
sells devices, all data generated is
shared to a public traffic count
map for shared use.
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22. City-Sponsored App Challenges
App Challenges allow civic
hackers to apply their developer
skills using open data, often to
address urban problems
proposed by agencies.
London
NYC
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23. Fast Pace of Local Innovation
Boston, USA
Agency Releases Real Time Data
Google Maps implementation
Desktop Widget
Additional websites
Countdown Sign
iPhone app
IVR Service
SMS Service
1
Weeks After
Opening Data
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
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24. Open Data as a Transport Investment
London, UK
• ~500 Applications
(mobile, web, others)
• ~5000 people involved in
“app industry”
• As a transport project
alone, evaluated by
usual economic criteria:
ROI = 58:1
• TfL have stopped
making their own apps
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Adapted with permission from Andrew Stott (@DirDigEng)
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25. Efforts throughout Russian Federation
Russian Federation Presidential Decree № 601 of 7 May 2012
Government of the Russian Federation was directed to ensure the
availability of access through the Internet to open data placed in the
governmental information systems.
The short-term impact included
a regulatory framework to
require open data policies be
implemented.
75% of agencies publishing
some kind of open data through
their websites. Some very little.
Transport and roads data is in
high demand!
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26. IMPLEMENTATION
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27. Resources required for open data
intiatives
• Immediate
• Resources for setting up a data section on websites
• Staff time to identify “easy” data for sharing
• Staff champions for effort and motivation throughout agency
• Medium Term
• Staff-time for data conversion/uploads and developer engagement
• Outreach costs and prizes
• Long Run
• Connected systems for automatic updates
• Ongoing staff time for maintenance and expansion
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28. Easiest and cheapest method
• Open by Default
• Mentality that data should be public UNLESS there is a compelling
privacy or security concern to keep it internal.
• New systems are established with a data output/publishing function
Sunlight Foundation: http://sunlightfoundation.com/opendataguidelines/
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29. World Bank Case: Mexico City
Crowdsourced Data Generation
• Example of Open by Default
• Implementing use of transit data
collection/management tool that conforms
to common standards (GTFS)
• Developing tools to capture and
communicate disruptions in public transport
service
• Test and pursue new data standards to
better represent informal transit services.
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30. Closing Remarks
• Opening data can enable others’ innovation based on existing
services and information
• Benefits of open data accrue to
• Travelers - have more services available)
• Agencies – free app/service development and better collaboration
• Public – improved transparency and activism
• Global cities are now leading the way in the open data
movement
• Implementation steps are now documented for easy
deployment – help available through World Bank
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31. THANK YOU
Comments, Questions?
James Wong, Consultant jcwong86@gmail.com
Vitaly Vlasov, Consultant inxaoc.work@gmail.com
Oleg Petrov, World Bank opetrov@worldbank.org
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32. World Bank – East & Southeast Asia
Case studies and support available for:
• Data creation and management
• App competitions
• Real-Time congestion maps
• Roas-safety management
• Crowd-sourced data creation
• Open street map contributions
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