Open source coding ‘vital for new mobility services’

MOBILITY

The Government is being urged to support the use of open source coding in transport innovations such as Mobility as a Service and Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.

The TravelSpirit Foundation says journey planning systems to support mobility as a service  (MaaS) offerings in Finland and Netherlands are built with open source code that can be shared by developers across the world.

“This means that any enhancements to the code base, in terms of intelligent algorithms and security measures, are shared and tested globally. In the UK, Open APIs such as TransportAPI and the bus services API provided by Transport for the West Midlands are making a difference to travellers now.” 

TravelSpirit says open source code “helps procurements focus on securing highly skilled engineers, rather than commercial contracts linked to proprietary systems that slow the pace of innovation and constrain the potential to scale solutions and integration across modes, borders and competing  services”. 

TravelSpirit makes the comments in response to the Government’s future mobility ‘grand challenge’ consultation. 

“It is essential to appreciate the reality of transport in the 21st century – it is increasingly global, and many of the key actors involved in the UK transport system are big data monopolies and global tech startups,” says TravelSpirit. “These technology players on one hand don’t necessarily understand, or care for, the intricacies of local, regional or even national transport policy thinking, and on the other, often hold much greater data and levels of customer insight than individual cities, regions, or even national government.” 

TravelSpirit calls on the Government to: 

• support a culture of open collaboration within the UK transport industry to achieve greater technical know-how 

• promote the adoption of ‘open’ technologies, “supporting a healthier level of market competition for intelligent transport system procurements”; 

• develop solutions and standards for trusted data, customer data portability and system inter-operability; and 

• support an ‘Open Internet of Mobility’.