E psi tomek-zielinski-transportoid-conference-slides
1. Re-use of public transport timetables in
Transportoid mobile application
Tomasz Zieliński
2. About Transportoid
Mobile public transport timetables for
60 Polish cities and agglomerations
Available on Android
and Windows Phone
One of the most popular Polish mobile
app, 250.000+ downloads and counting
3. Source of timetable data
Webscraping is not exactly bad itself, it is just
very inefficient and error-prone
Bigger cities have routes with
alternating patterns, extended trips,
variable endings and so on
Some data is often lost in translation
4. Challenges
When webscraping is not enough, the support
from public transport carrier or supervisor
is necessary
In most cases there were
no problems at all
5. Introducing the City of Kraków
Carrier (MPK Kraków) and municipal authorities
both refuse to share the data
In 2012 I won a court case against
MPK Kraków (carrier) and two cases
against the Mayor of the Kraków City
Yet I have not received the current data even once
6.
7. We need a better law
If the data you need chanes frequently (more
often than once a month), you are at the mercy
of a data keeper
It has to change