Data at the heart of public transport: UITP launches new project Data4PT

It has been an eventful couple of years for urban mobility, to say the least.Innovations such asautomated vehicles(AVs)Artificial Intelligence(AI) andMobility as a Service(MaaS) have completely reshaped our sector: adigital transformationthat goes hand in hand with people’s mobility habits evolving and mobility behaviours being transformed.

These behavioural changes, alongside the development of mobile information and the rise of the sharing economy, encourage the progression of new forms of mobility. Services such as ride-hailing, car and bike-sharing and shared e-scooters have progressed enormously in recent times, which forces cities to rethink their mobility management.

And yet, none of these new mobility services would meet people’s and society’s needs without capitalising on the massive amount of data produced by the public transport sector. As new mobility players enter the market, large amounts of data are collected by the many providers to enhance their services. Data is the key to information such as travel activity, type of mobility demand, travel patterns, and much more.

Now, to enhance data-sharing practices in the public transport sector, UITP is happy to announce it coordinates the new EU-funded project Data4PT. Having its (virtual!) kick-off meeting this week, Data4PT aims to support the development of data exchange standards and models to fulfil the needs of multimodal travel information service providers.

By supporting Member States in deploying a set of harmonised European public data standards (called Transmodel, NeTEx and SIRI), the project wants to enable union-wide multimodal travel information services. In the end, Data4PT aims to contribute to a seamless door-to-door travel ecosystem across Europe that covers all mobility services. This will make it easier for providers to deploy services and meet the ever-changing mobility demand and behaviour of citizens.

Alongside working with nine different EU-member states, UITP is running Data4PT together with ITxPT, an association enabling interoperability between IT systems in public transport. As Technical Manager of the project, ITxPT will provide partners with the technical knowledge and resources on open data.

The website of Data4PT will be online soon, so stay tuned!

Read our official press release here

How to regulate new mobility services is a hot topic in mobility research. To ensure maximum benefit from innovation in mobility, cities have to find and apply the right regulatory frameworks. The UITP-coordinated GECKO project provides tools and recommendations to cities to allow them to effectively deploy emerging technologies and new mobility services. Recently, GECKO held a webinar on the regulation of E-Scooters, in which the city’s and operator’s perspective were discussed. Missed the webinar? You can watch it here!

Data4PT has received funding from the European Union’s DG for Mobility and Transport under grant agreement No MOVE/B4/SUB/2019-104/CEF/PSA/SI2.821136.