The Government yesterday announced a £5m programme to provide open data for the rail sector. This is excellent. Open data liberates firms and app developers to find solutions to customers’ problems that won’t otherwise be found. Open data from major cities like London enabled firms like Citymapper and UrbanThings to get started; and then build the incredible products for which they subsequently became known.
This is especially critical in the new Shapps-Williams environment in which operators have no revenue risk, and Great British Railways make all the commercial decisions.
So, in general, I’m very pleased. But nothing is perfect in life, and I’ve three worries
MODAL SILOS
My first concern is that this does seem to reinforce the silos-by-mode that British transport seems to be suffering from. The Government recently published a bus strategy and a rail strategy; but they were kept entirely apart from each other. The Government is already engaged in a major bus open data exercise. It would have been ideal if they could have been combined.
There are three reasons for this: