The End of Travel, Part 2: The Technology Innovations Enabling The Rise of Smart Mobility

Research & Innovation
API & Platform
Business Strategy & Digital Transformation
New Usages, Connected Business & Mobility
Copyright © William El Kaim 2015
Part 2: The Technology Innovations Enabling The Rise of Smart
Mobility
William El Kaim – March 2015
1

Plan
• Smart City: Hungry For Open Data
• Open Data Is The Fuel Of Smart Mobility
• Transit Real Time Data: Standards And Protocols
• Mapping The World
• Journey Planner Algorithm And Engines
• Transit Applications
• From Transit Applications To Multimodal Journey Planner
• Multimodal Door to Door Journey Planner
• The Age Of Platforms
2

Smart City: Hungry For
Open Data
3

Singapore Live
4

Smart City based on data …
Source: Disit 5

²
http://servicemap.disit.org/WebAppGrafo/mappa.jsp
6

Smart City: Seoul
• Seoul, South Korea has equipped its taxis and buses with GPS
transmitters and used data from the movement of these vehicles to monitor
traffic flows and optimize traffic lights, speed limits, and public transportation
schedules, often in real-time.
• The city further combines this vehicle data with smart transit-card data (more
recently NFC-enabled smartphone wallet data) to observe the movement of
people through the city’s subways, buses, and taxis and ensure both
adequate capacity in the transportation system and adjacent infrastructure
and services like housing, retail, and policing.
Source: Pandodaily 7

Smart City: Other Examples
• Dublin, Ireland worked with IBM to install a network of sensors throughout the
city to monitor traffic in real-time.
• This data is combined with closed-circuit cameras and bus-mounted GPS transmitters to
digitally map the city in real-time and to enable real-time, intelligent traffic management
measures.
• London hired Microsoft in 2011 to create a developer platform around its real-
time raw transportation data with the goal of offering consumers more insight
into the various transportation options available on any given route.
• Usage of the platform quickly grew from thousands to millions of users per day.
• The city also layered in Internet of Things devices to monitor temperature, vibration, and
humidity, and to detect faults in the Underground train system.
• Uber offer cities, beginning with Boston, access to its trip data for use in
master-planning 
Source: Pandodaily 8

Smart City: Data and API
• The smart cities agenda is transforming how cities manage their infrastructure
and how they communicate with citizens and local businesses.
• Open data and the use of sensor technologies to provide real-time feedback
on the use of urban infrastructure are two components at the center of what is
considered a “smart city.”
• Cities around the world are opening up their public transport data to enable
third-party developers to create new commercial and social good products.
• Public transport is often a good starting point for cities looking to open up
useful data sources as part of a smart cities agenda.
Source: ProgrammableWeb 9

Smart City: Data and API
• How public transport data is opened (and the role of APIs in this process)
demonstrates the potential that comes from cities opening up their data:
• It is an immediately useful data source that enhances participation in city life.
• It can add value to contextual and personal data.
• It has a real-time component.
• There are commercial revenue opportunities across a range of industry uses, with
innovative business models that can be applied.
• It often involves multiple stakeholders and, therefore, requires aggregating of data from
multiple sources.

Connected Smart Cities
http://connectedsmartcities.eu/ 11

Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) initiative
• The Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) initiative, signed by 31 cities from
Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Brazil, aims to kickstart
the use of a shared set of wide-spread, open standards and principles,
enabling the development of smart city applications and solutions to reach
many cities at once, by making systems interoperable between cities, and
within a city.
• Cities adopt an initial open-licensed standard API FIWARE NGSI, which
provides lightweight and simple means to gather, publish, query and
subscribe context-based, real-time information.
• The cities will also use and improve standard data models based on
experimentation and actual usage.
• The initial data models were chosen by mature European smart cities in the CitySDK
initiative, forming the basis for a joint City Service Development Kit.
12

Open API Platform FIWARE
• The EU-funded open API platform FIWARE has reached an agreement with
seven countries to embed its core infrastructure as open API standards for
creating new civic tech solutions.
• Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Portugal and Spain
• Agreed to three technical mechanisms for the development of smart city
infrastructure.
• To support the deployment of FIWARE’s NGSI API open standard, which proposes a
common data model for getting real-time, contextual data about cities
• To share API data models, starting with the CitySDK APIs
• To use the open source platform CKAN to publish open data.
• The initiative hopes to foster the growth of a new wave of startups focused on
smart city technologies.
13

FIWARE
https://forge.fiware.org/plugins/mediawiki/wiki/
fiware/index.php/FI- 14

CitySDK
• The CitySDK project is co-
funded by the European
Union, and is about creating
a City Service Development
Kit: a collection of tools and
APIs to help cities become
more smart
• CitySDK Participation API
• CitySDK Mobility API
• CitySDK Tourism API
http://www.citysdk.eu/ 15

Smart City & Connected City
16

Open Data Is The Fuel Of
Smart Mobility
17

Three Steps …
1. Making Data Available
• Government and cities providing “open data” through portal
2. Making Data Accessible
• Government and cities providing API through partners
• Government and cities using a marketplace to trade data
3. Making Data Valuable
• How are developers using public transport APIs to empower a smart cities agenda and
what is the progress of city authorities looking to make their transportation systems
smart?

Making Data Available, Accessible and Valuable
• Schedule and Transit Open data is common in North America, but not so
common in EU
• National Transit DB and US City Open Data Census
• New approach in France taken recently with the creation of a new
government Opendata web site
• Data.gouv.fr
• In Germany the concept of marketplace for data was put in place by the
government
• MDM: Mobility Marketplace
• In UK, the London Datastore offers all sorts of data about the City.
19

Data: Data.gouv.fr (France)
http://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/groups/territoires-et- 20

http://data.london.gov.uk/ 21

Data: US City Open Data Census
http://us-city.census.okfn.org/
22

Data: Seattle
https://data.seattle.gov/browse?category=Transportation
23

Public Dialogue in NYC
http://www.nyc.gov/html/visionzero/pages/dialogue/ 24

Data: Mobility Marketplace in Germany
• Project funded by German Government
• Pilot started in 2012, and should be productive in 2014
• Marketplace for mobility related data where authorities (like public transport
companies) and private companies can sell/buy data.
http://www.mdm-portal.de/ 25

Quandl
https://www.quandl.com/ 26

Quandl
https://www.quandl.com/ 27

Open Data Tooling
• Geographic Information System centric
• ArcGIS OpenData, Spallian Carto
• Data Centric
• cKan, DataHub.io, Junar, OpenDataSoft, Socrata
• CrowdSourcing Centric
• Spallian TellMyCIty
• Any tool enabling sharing your data …
28

Copyright © William El Kaim 2015 https://opendata.arcgis.com/about
ArcGis OpenData
29

Spallian
http://www.spallian.com/ 30

Copyright © William El Kaim 2015 http://ckan.org/
cKan
31

Datahub.io
http://datahub.io/dataset?q=gtfs
32

http://www.junar.com/
Junar
33

http://www.opendatasoft.com/
OpenDataSoft
34

http://www.socrata.com/
Socrata
35

Spallian: TellMyCity
http://www.spallian.com/tellmycity/
Already 70 cities using it
36

Data Everywhere
• Data Everywhere makes it
simple for spreadsheet users to
synchronize, share, and collect
data.
• Data Everywhere’s
spreadsheet add-ins take data
from your existing
spreadsheets and automatically
send it to other authorized
people, spreadsheets, and
applications.
https://www.dataeverywhere.com/ 37

SNCF
http://opendata.transilien.com/apps/
https://data.sncf.com/apps
SNCF is the French Rail
Mobility provider
38

Transit Real Time Data:
Standards And Protocols
39

Transit Open Format: Two Competing Formats
• Transit open format as open protocol and API provided by  
Google : GTFS platform and API
• The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) defines a common format for public
transportation schedules and associated geographic information.
• GTFS "feeds" allow public transit agencies to publish their transit data and developers to
write applications that consume that data in an interoperable way
• GTFS-realtime is a feed specification that allows public transportation agencies to provide
realtime updates about their fleet to application developers. It is an extension to GTFS
• EU standard named Service Interface for Real Time Information (SIRI)
• XML protocol to allow distributed computers to exchange real time information
about public transport services and vehicles.
40

Google GTFS
• Provides schedule (static data) or Real-time Transit information everybody
can use
• GTFS feeds
• General Transit Feed Specification Reference
• Transit Data Feed: List of Public Feeds
• GTFS Data exchange
• Tools
• Google Map Transit
• Google transit for developers
• Google Now and crowdsourcing from Waze.
• List of tools not built by Google: https://code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/wiki/
OtherGTFSTools
41

Google GTFS
42

Data: National Transit Data (USA)
http://www.ntdprogram.gov/ntdprogram/data.htm 43

SIRI the European standard
• Service Interface for Real Time Information (SIRI)
• XML protocol to allow distributed computers to exchange real time information
about public transport services and vehicles.
• The protocol is a European Committee for Standardization technical
specification,
• developed with initial participation by France, Germany (Verband Deutscher
Verkehrsunternehmen), Scandinavia, and the UK (RTIG)
• Based on the Transmodel (EN TC278, Reference Data Model For Public Transport,
EN12896) abstract model for public transport information,
• The present version of TRANSMODEL (V5.0) uses an Entity-Relationship modeling
approach
• Comprises a general purpose model, and an XML schema for public transport
information.
• More Information: http://user47094.vs.easily.co.uk/siri/
44

http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/transit/
Google Maps Transit
45

Google Now!
46

Mapping the World
47

OpenStreetMaps
https://blog.openstreetmap.org/
http://www.openstreetmap.org/
48

OpenStreetMaps
https://help.openstreetmap.org/,
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page
49

http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/
UMAP
51

Google Maps
52

Google Maps
53

Google myMaps
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.m4b
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/
54

Google Map Maker
http://www.google.com/mapmaker 55

Google Earth
https://www.google.com/earth/ 56

Nokia Here
Android Version
Samsung Gear VR Glass Version
https://www.here.com/
57

Mapquest
http://www.mapquest.com/
58

Maps Creator
http://www.zeemaps.com/https://www.mapbox.com/editor/#style 59

Collaborative Maps
http://www.collaborativemap.org/ 60

Comparing Sources (Geocoding / Address)
http://www.ideeslibres.org/GeoCheck/ 61

DeCarta: Bought by UBER
http://www.decarta.com/ 62

Places for Android and iOS
The Places APIs for Android and iOS bridge the gap between simple geographic
locations expressed as latitude and longitude, and how people associate
location with a known place.
https://developers.google.com/places/android/ 63

Mobility Lab Tools
https://github.com/conveyal/modeifyMobility Lab
64

Subway Map
http://kalyani.com/2010/10/subway-map-visualization-jquery- 65

D3.js
http://d3js.org/ 66

Transitive.js
https://github.com/conveyal/transitive.js 67

Leaflet: open-source JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps
http://leafletjs.com/ 68

Journey Planner Algorithm
And Engines
69

Searching The Fastest Algorithm
• In 1959, Dijkstra published the first algorithm.
• Tree of minimum total length between n nodes
• In 1987, the algorithm was improved by Tarjan.
• But still not efficient enough for computer available at that time
• In 2005, a challenge organised by Dimacs lead to the modern version of the
algorithm.
• The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology did provide several very efficient ones
• In 2008, Geisberger proposed the “ Contraction Hierarchies ” algorithm
• Faster and simpler for route calculation, used by OSRM
• In 2012, Daniel Delling from Microsoft Research proposed RAPTOR
• The algorithm is the one used by Navitia
• In 2013, the “connection scan algorithm” was released improving Raptor
From Tristram Grabener blog and PHD thesis (in French) 70

Open Source Routing Engines
• Most of open source routing engines are bundled with a web/mobile front-end
and a cartography service.
• EU funded Multi-modal Journey Planner
• GraphServer, Navitia, Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM), R4
• Some offers only a Library or API
• Mumoro is Library that aims to provide multimodal routing
• Research projects
• Path2Go, Synthese
71

GRAPHSERVER
• Graphserver is a multi-modal trip planner. Graphserver supports transit
modes through GTFS, and street-based modes through OSM.
• The core graphserver library has Python bindings which provide easy
construction, storage, and analysis of graph objects.
http://graphserver.github.com/graphserver/ 72

Navitia 2.0 (Open Source)
https://github.com/CanalTP/navitia
1.multi-modal journeys computation

2.line schedules

3.next departures

4.explore public transport data

5.sexy things such as isochrones
73

Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM)
• C++ implementation of a high-performance routing engine for shortest paths
in road networks.
• Combines sophisticated routing algorithms with the open and free road network data of
the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project.
http://project-osrm.org/ and http://map.project-osrm.org/ 74

Rapid Real-time Routing
• RRRR (usually pronounced R4) is a C-language implementation of the
RAPTOR public transit routing algorithm.
• https://github.com/bliksemlabs/rrrr
• Project from the developers of OpenTripPlanner
• The goal of this project is to generate sets of Pareto-optimal itineraries over large
geographic areas (e.g. BeNeLux or all of Europe), improving on the resource
consumption and complexity of existing more flexible alternatives.
• It is the core routing component of the Bliksem journey planner and passenger
information system.
• The system should eventually support real-time vehicle/trip updates reflected in trip plans
and be capable of running directly on a mobile device with no Internet connection.
75

MUltiModal MUltiObjective ROuting
• Mumoro is a research project
• Library aims to provide multimodal routing: combining subway, walking and bike.
• It is also multiobjective: it finds the best route optimizing according to time
taken, mode changes, CO2 emissions etc.
• https://github.com/Tristramg/mumoro/
76

Path2Go
http://www.networkedtraveler.org/index.php?o=y 77

Synthese
https://extranet.rcsmobility.com/projects/synthese/wiki
78

Routing Engines Through API
https://www.rome2rio.com/documentationhttp://
www.programmableweb.com/
79

Transit Applications
80

CityTransit Information
• City Specific Web with live info
• Transport for London
• MTA in New York City and Augmented Reality to Animate NYC Subway Maps
• Making transit information ubiquitous in buildings and other public spaces
• Transiteditor and TransitScreen
• Bus Specific
• OneBusAway experiment
81

Transport for London
http://tfl.gov.uk/ 82

Transport for London
http://tfl.gov.uk/ 83

MTA
http://apps.mta.info/trainTime/ 84

Tunnel Vision NYC
Augmented reality to show the traffic density
85

TransitScreen (USA)
http://transitscreen.com/ 86

OneBusAway
http://onebusaway.org/ 87

Ecosystem of apps
http://www.citygoround.org/apps/ 88

http://www.transiteditor.com/
89

Multi-City Transit Applications
• Moovit and Ototo: mobile app leveraging crowd information and delivering
door-to-door public transport information.
• Scout, now using Open Street Map and offering both GPS, and traffic
information.
• RideScout is a startup looking to simplify transit options for people on the go.
• OMG transit offers multimodal search and transportation options and booking
• The Transit works in 76 metropolitan areas that believe in Open Data.
• Cisco Personal Travel Assistant (PTA)
• Research
• Mobility Lab Transit Tech Initiative
90

Moovit: Where’s My Public Transport?
• Wants to solve the “uncertainty” that public transit users face.
• Where’s my bus right now? How do I find the right stop to board it? How do I pay when I
get on? It’s enough to make you want to stick with a car.
• One big challenge that Moovit faces is the sheer variety of different data
sources it has to handle.
• In some areas, there are real-time feeds of bus and train locations available, whereas in
others it has to work with fixed timetable information.
• What’s more, that data comes to Moovit in a variety of formats from 2,000 transport
agencies around the world.
• 30 employees (Dec. 2013) and already and already 100 metropolitan areas
91

http://tripplan.moovitapp.com/ 92

Moovit: Where’s My Public Transport?
93

Scout
http://www.scoutgps.com/ 95

RideScout: Transit Data Hub
• uses Google App Engine, Google Datastore, and Python and Django.
• As the company adds new data sources from across the country, it plans to
eventually make it easy to plan a trip from California to D.C. with a single
search
96

OMG Transit (USA cities)
https://omgtransit.com/#/mobileapps 99

The Transit App
http://thetransitapp.com/ 100

Cisco Personal Travel Assistant (PTA)
• Improve the transit experience of commuters by giving them access to
transportation information via a web enabled mobile device from any location.
• Joint project between Cisco, City of Seoul and city of Amsterdam
• The PTA consists of a number of solution elements including:
• A personal travel planner which among other functions allows the user to select the
optimal modes of transport for their journey, schedule travel activities and reduce their
carbon emissions.
• Carbon Calculator which informs users of their carbon footprint over time (daily, weekly,
monthly and yearly)
• Real Time Router which allows the user to optimize their trip as and when conditions
change (e.g.: traffic accidents).
• Transportation Information Service providing information about public transport options,
routes, arrival times and schedules.
101

Cisco Personal Travel Assistant (PTA)
• The project took 24 months to implement
• The actual (or projected) savings from the project are:
• Reduction of 12.7% in traffic volumes and 12.8% improvement in the speed of vehicles
102

Mobility Lab Transit Tech Initiative
• Funded through a Demonstration grant by the Virginia Department of Rail and
Public Transportation.
• This project will provide travelers with personalized information that reflects
their transit needs, pulling in the most cutting-edge trends happening at the
intersection of the transportation and technology industries:
• Open transport data standards such as GTFS and openstreetmap
• Multimodal trip planning engines like OpenTripPlanner, and
• Web-based visualization tools such as the D3 library.
• The goal is to answer more fundamental questions about:
• How the important places in a person’s life are connected via various travel options
• How robust those connections are, and
• How they fit into a larger travel decision-making context.
Source: Mobility Lab Tech Initiative 103

Mobility Lab Transit Tech Initiative
• Much of the initial work has been focused on the design and development of
a new transportation visualization package
• Called Transitive.js, which visually articulates personalized transportation data, drawing
inspiration from stylized transit maps.
• Additionally, work has begun on customizing OpenTripPlanner to generate
summaries of transit options.
• Rather than emphasizing the details of a specific journey at a specific time of day, the
project aims to build features that help people explore and contextualize transport options
as a holistic system.
• By showing how key places are connected, different transport options may become more
easily identified as a logical part of daily routines.
Source: Mobility Lab Tech Initiative 104

From Transit Applications
To Multimodal Journey
Planner
105

OpenTripPlanner
• Manage walking, mass transit, bike sharing, and car
sharing on an open source platform for iOS 6 that
cities and individuals can help design.
• The app was created by a non-profit technology
organization, OpenPlans, and will be raising
contributions on Kickstarter
• OpenPlans Transportation: http://
transportation.openplans.org/
106

PlannerStack: Journey Planner as a Service
http://www.plannerstack.com/
108

PlannerStack: “Vibrant” Community
http://www.plannerstack.org/ 109

EU funded Multi-modal Journey Planner
• 28 submissions of journey planners, out of which 12 were shortlisted.
Source 110

EU-wide Multi-Modal Travel Information
EU-wide Real-Time Traffic information
Free safety-related minimum
Traffic Info
Interoperable EU-wide eCall
EU ITS Directive
111

EU funded Multi-modal Journey Planner 
112

European Itinerary Search
http://www.simplicim-lorraine.eu/simplicim_en/euspirit/search
113

Multimodal Door to Door
Journey Planner
114

Traveler journey before
Source: World Economic Forum/The Boston Consulting Group analysis
115

MultiModal is the new Paradigm!  
Door to Door, from A to B, …
• Travel today is more than just station to station; it is about door-to-door
connectivity, thus giving rise to new market players offering integrated various
modes to travel.
Source: Frost and Sullivan 116

MultiModal is the new Paradigm!
• Definition
• From an origin and a destination and a set of optimization criteria to get one or more
routes combining different transport modes.
• This definition is now “extended”
• And provide in-mobility real time information and advices for a seamless journey and
reducing
• Travel time
• Traveler stress
• City congestion and pollution
• Etc.
• Could be used to promote certain mode of transportation and to analyze the demand by
transportation operators.
117

MultiModal is the new Paradigm!
• Majors steps for providers :
• Geocoding (and positioning positions in a graph)
• Route calculation (shortest path, or best path using different weights)
• Presentation of the results (biasing, filtering)
• Real-time Route directions (step by step) and alerts
• Aggregation of data and analysis
118

From Travel to Mobility: Multimodal & Door to Door
Image from http://mobilitylab.org/tech/transit-tech-initiativehttps://citymapper.com/
119

Mobility: Multimodal & Door to Door
• Multimodal is a way to combine metro (subway), train, bus, bicycle, walk or
car to go from one place to another.
• The other terminology used is "door to door", in that case, you have to add taxi and black
car (car with chauffeur).
• Some important distinctions should be noted when speaking of multimodal
search:
• Planning vs.. Booking: some routing includes prices some not
• Routing could be based on actual timetables or only on approximate ones
• For example some do not use actual timetables (they use information like: 'one train every hour'
and might then be wrong by up to an hour), most others do.
• Multimodal is emerging mainly due to the high speed train network, but also to reduce
CO2 emission. So they are generally also taken into account as search parameters.
120

Rome2Rio – MultiModal Search
https://www.rome2rio.com/ 121

Rome2Rio: Also a Platform
122

KDS Neo – Corporate Booking
KDS Neo 123

RouteRank
http://www.routerank.com/fr/ 124

Multimodal and door-to-door 
Major web sites and apps
• TravelStoreMaker
• Bulgaria-based TravelStoreMaker has developed software that supports the planning of
complex itineraries across multiple modes of travel, with content coming from many
sources
• Wanderio
• Door-to-door multimodal tool used for B2C (Air, Rail, Bus, and car)
• Use Rome2Rio
• FromAtoB
• Door-to-door multimodal tool used for B2C (Air, Rail, Bus, and car)
127

Multimodal and door-to-door  
Regional offer
• Europe
• GoEuro
• Multimodal (Air, Rail, Bus), but not door-to-door (only at city, town and village level)
• MyTripSet
• From Voyages-sncf: Air, Car, Train
• Waymate
• Multi-modal search (Air, Rail, Bus, car), but not yet door-to-door.
• USA
• HopStop (bought by Apple)
• US local door-to-door and transit transportation
• Now offering some other countries and cities …
128

Multimodal ground transportation
• Kelbillet
• French multimodal search engine that indexes fares for trains, buses, airplanes, cars, and
rideshares. It’s aimed at French travelers taking domestic and short-haul trips.
• Loco2
• UK multimodal train only search engine in Europe within thousands of European
destinations.
• Wanderu
• Ground transport metasearch website that helps travelers find and book inter-city bus and
train travel in the USA.
• Mozio
• From and to Airport, mainly cab and shared bus.
129

Multimodal search - France Initiative
• France is launching a project to create a nation-wide multimodal search
engine by 2015
• Initiative from french gov. agency named: « Agence française pour l’information
multimodale et la billettique (Afimb) » and with
• Transportation Agency: Groupement des autorités responsables de transport (Gart)
• French Regions : Association des régions de France (ARF).
• Objective
• Find an itinerary in France using: plane, train, car, metro, tramway, bus, bycicle, car
sharing and Taxi
• A technical report to be published in 2014 and realised by Moviken
• Then a call for proposal for making it real for 2015
Source : Mobilicité 130

Multimodal search  
By Geography
• Country Based
• India: MakeMyTrip RoutePlanner covers 1 billion multi-modal routes and provides service
via Web, mobile apps and even SMS
• France: GeoVelo, Wehicles, Mappy
• Germany: Qixxit / AllRyder (mobile only from WayMate) / HAFAS from Hacon
• Great Britain – TransportDirect
• Netherlands: http://9292.nl/en
• Map makr
• Country Region Based
• Simplicim (Lorraine France) for EU itinerary
• StationMobile (Grenoble France)
131

Multimodal Search - By Geography
• City based
• City Mapper: London, NYC, Paris, Berlin
• CitiWay
• Sharette: mix public transportation and ride-sharing
132

https://citymapper.com/
133

CitiWay
http://www.cityway.company/ 135

Sharette
https://sharette.fr/ 136

Examples
Tools Possible Classification
B2B B2C
What’s your need?
Multimodal
Door-to-door
Integrated
Booking
Planning
Only
Redirect to
suppliers
KDS Neo 
RouteRank 
Rome2Rio
Multimodal
Door-to-door
Integrated
Booking
Planning
Only
myTripSets 
MakeMyTrip
Wanderio 
FromAtoB 
CityMapper 
Moovit
137

Platform and Ecosystems
138

Platform: What Are We Doing That’s Bigger Than Us?
• Platform is one of the most misunderstood ideas in the world of the Digital
world.
• Platforms can be accidental or intentional.
• A platform is a foundational product that moves beyond product status by
encouraging others to build, play, and/or iterate on top of it.
• The value and utility of the system is continually being discovered and expanded not just
by the organization, but by its users and customers.
• Platforms are shared innovation engines that outsource the costly and
uncertain discovery process.
• Many platforms today are 100% software, but they don’t have to be.
• AirBnB and Uber turned the physical world (cars and housing) into a platform for millions.
Source: Aaron Dignan Medium blog Post
139

Platform: What Are We Doing That’s Bigger Than Us?
• Users are building businesses on the back of the platform, and in some cases
changing how they operate in order to better serve the platform.
• Establishing a platform in the center of a robust digital ecosystem requires a
digital operating model, one that is appropriately permeable to third parties
that can co-create new value from what a company and others have to offer.
Source: Aaron Dignan Medium blog Post
From a platform the company builds
upon to a platform the world builds
upon!
140

PlannerStack
http://www.plannerstack.com/
141

A-Mano – Geolocalised Platform in-situ
http://www.a-mano.fr/ 142

CitizenData
http://www.cityzendata.com/
143

CitizenGate
http://www.citizengate.com/ 144

GE Predix: Platform for Industrial Age
https://www.gesoftware.com/platform 145

Daimler Mobility Services Moovel
https://www.moovel.com/
GottaPark
146

Simpli-City
• Mobility Service Framework
• A next-generation European-wide service platform allowing the creation of mobility-related
services as well as the creation of corresponding Apps.
• This will enable third party providers to produce a wide range of interoperable, value-
added services, and Apps for road users.
• Mobility-related Data as a Service
• A framework for the integration of various different data sources like sensors, cooperative
systems, telematics, open data repositories, people-centric sensing, and media data
streams, so that these data can be accessed and utilised in a unified way.
• Personal Mobility Assistant
• An end user assistant that allows road users to make easily use of the information
provided by Apps and to interact with them based on a speech recognition approach.
http://www.simpli-city.eu 147

Simpli-City
http://www.simpli-city.eu 148

CitizenGate
http://www.citizengate.com/ 149

eBay Hotels In Germany
http://www.ebay.de/rpp/reisen 150

Other Platforms
http://www.covoiturage.fr/ http://www.kelbillet.fr/
151

HopOn: Smart Mobile Ticketting
http://hopon.co/home/ 152

Platform Ecosystems are created Through APIs
The new digital, networked, real-time society
forces us to start thinking and acting as an
ecosystem.
Ecosystems are
developed using
platforms to glue
services via API and
funds to encourage
startups and partners to
hook in
Source: PWC, Exploiting the growing value from information 153

Three types of public transport APIs
1. The first is created by volunteers who just scrape the data. As the API
creators are also reusing them, the format and vocabulary for their responses
and resources are often custom made for their specific use case.
• Examples: Swiss Public Transport API, Belgium iRail
2. A second type of APIs are the ones created by data owners or the transport
companies themselves.
• They are set up in order to stimulate reuse for use cases they have in mind. The problem
with these APIs is that often there are rate limits; it is hard to get through the user
agreements; they have awkward SOAP/XML constructions; and they don't follow existing
specifications such as SIRI or GTFS-realtime.”
• Examples: Dutch Railways, French National Railways

Three types of public transport APIs
3. A third type of APIs are the ones created by a consortium of stakeholders
reusing the API and the data owner.
• The API comes to exist after different people with different use cases are putting forward
some resources they need, when they also add how the response should look like, and
maybe help build these APIs on top of Open Data.
• Examples: Bliksem Labs, Navitia, OpenTripPlanner

API: Stichting OpenGeo (Netherlands)
http://opengeo.nl/ 156

Transport API Britain
• The Transport API has about 600 developers, and while initial growth focused
on smartphone apps, it is seeing greater uptake among hyperlocal
applications offered by larger enterprises.
• Becoming a data aggregator is one approach to commercialization that may
suit some developers. For Transport API, the opportunities to service new
markets is continually growing.
• Commercial API license model has drawn in hyperlocal customers like
ScreachTV and Toothpick
• It is also servicing large government authorities and global franchises operating in the
U.K.
• Heathrow airport populating their kiosk screens and websites.
157

API: Transport API Britain
http://transportapi.com/ 158

API: Transport API Britain
Target the developers!
159

API: Transport API Britain (Bus. Model)
160

API: Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York (MTA)
• The Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York (MTA) provides the MTA
API for access to New York’s subway and bus GTFS data feeds.
• A new policy will require developers to register for an API key before being
granted access to the API data.
• Since the MTA began publishing its open data in 2008, over 200 mobile apps
using MTA data have been launched by the developer community
• MTA’s terms and conditions of use require developers “to download and host
the data on the developer's or a third party's server and to make the data
available to others who will access the server provided by the
developer.” (Original emphasis in the terms and conditions.)

MTA Developers Discussions
Target the developers!
162

API: Queensland Australia
• The state of Queensland, in Australia, has responsibility for managing public
transport services for its cities, including Brisbane.
• Its Department of Transport and Main Roads’ TransLink division has released
the OPIA API, which strongly recommends that developers build their own
server-side service that wraps the TransLink API and to use caching of all
data except the data needed for immediate journey planning.

API: TransitCast
• Writing an API on top of existing APIs, perhaps by augmenting additional
information, is definitely a viable business model.
• This is the approach TransiCast has taken:
• specialized in aggregating transit data across North America
• working on curating public transportation data access on GoogleTransitDataFeed since
2006, with no association with Google
• Out of the 300 feeds covered, about 20 require API keys, and they keep those as issued
by the agency to developers, to place calls to the agency web services
• Use Google App Engine (GAE)

API: TransitCast
http://transicast.com/ 165

API: City Service Dev. Kit
• Co-funded by the European Union, developer-facing API design-model that
hopes to become a standard across European cities
http://www.citysdk.eu/ 166

API: Others
• TriMet in Portland waqs one of the first having implemented GTFS and real-
time feeds and have a host of experience
• Use Microsoft Azure
• Transport for London has pioneered the bulk delivery of real-time data as well
as targeted real-time APIs at large scale.
• Use Microsoft Azure
• Navitia is an emerging open source API platform for public transport data.
• Contributors are being invited to upload transport data to the platform for their cities, and
six cities are already available.
• The API provides a common transit glossary so that developers can scale applications for
cities using the same resource calls.

Multimodal Door-To-Door is
the future of mobility
168

Multimodal Door-To-Door is the future of mobility
• Door-to-door app are starting on the lower-end of the
market offering local mobile transit information and
now booking.
• Then, with time, they will grow and target the major
cities, then some key regions and all transports
mode.
• These companies are looking for growth, targeting
the major revenue niches
• Multimodal Search and online booking, real time
transportation data will merge to create new kind of
virtual mobility assistant: The IPITA
169

Key Resources
• Tristram Grabener blog and PHD thesis
(in French)
• Frost & Sullivan’s Future of Mobility
• Mobility Lab Transit Tech Initiative
Claudine O'Sullivan
http://www.claudineosullivan.com/
Email : info@claudineosullivan.com
William(at)el-kaim(point)com
 
+33 6 41 73 00 34
http://fr.linkedin.com/in/williamelkaim
http://www.twitter.com/welkaim
http://www.slideshare.net/welkaim
170

The End of Travel, Part 2: The Technology Innovations Enabling The Rise of Smart Mobility

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