Science Library Pad

Ottawa Transit Data Day - June 2, 2012

Having liberated Ottawa's real-time bus location data, the city is now moving to the next step of bringing developers and OC Transpo together to make (even more) amazing things.

Ottawa Transit Data Day is June 2, 2012 at Ottawa City Hall

Register at http://transit-data-yow.eventbrite.com/

Find more information about the available data in the Open Data Ottawa blog

Follow @opendataottawa

Suggest datasets at DataOtt

Ask questions in the GPS API mailing list

Provide feedback directly about OC Transpo open data: OCOpenData@ottawa.ca

Event hashtag will probably be #yowdata

So many communications channels.  Whew.

Ottawa real-time transit data coming March 2012

SIDEBAR: If you have questions about developing with the OC Transpo real-time data, there is a discussion group.  ENDSIDEBAR

In a special meeting of Transit Commission in January 2012, Ottawa's transit agency OC Transpo was compelled to release real-time position (GPS) open data by March 22, 2012.

The recommendation is

That the Transit Commission direct staff to work with the Staff/Commissioner Working Group on Transit Technology to develop an OC Transpo Real-Time GPS Data Policy that is in accordance with existing policy and which includes, but is not limited to, an Application Programming Interface (API) Overview and Terms of Use for the consideration of the Transit Commission at its March meeting.

with further direction

Once developed, the IT Working Group will be recommending that the OC Transpo Real-Time GPS Data Policy be approved by the Commission, and that the Real Time GPS data feed be fully activated by March 22, 2012.

above from ACS2012-CMR-OTC-0003: OC Transpo Real-time GPS Data Policy.

The report and associated recommendations were CARRIED (approved) by the Transit Commission.  For those who don't think government can act quickly, it was just a week from OC Transpo announcing that they didn't want to release the data, to the meeting where they were required to release it.  Ottawa's councillors really stepped up and delivered.

There was lots of coverage of the Transit Commission decision:

• Reddit - OC Transpo to release bus-location data March 22
• YourOttawaRegion.com - OC Transpo set to release bus-location data March 22
• CBC News - OC Transpo reverses course, again set to release GPS info
• Metro News - Releasing GPS data earns OC Transpo points
• Ottawa Citizen - Open OC Transpo data, transit commission rules
• Centretown News - OC Transpo's GPS data to be made public

More OC Transpo real-time open data news

UPDATE 2012-02-20: OC Transpo is now required by Transit Commission to release GPS open data by March 22, 2012 ENDUPDATE

Some great ongoing coverage of the reluctance of Ottawa's transit agency, OC Transpo, to release real-time bus position information despite city policy, strong demands from Councillors, and insistence from citizens.

Developers

"I think in general OC Transpo is going to underestimate the capacity of the developer community to work together and solve problems," said Jonathan Rudenberg, who wrote a bus-location app using OC Transpo data that won a "people's choice" award in the city's application contest last year.

Ottawa Citizen - Criticism of route apps disputed - by David Reevely (@davidreevely) - January 20, 2012

You can find Jonathan on Twitter @titanous and information about his app Where is my bus? is available on the Apps4Ottawa contest site.

Developer John Gill (@swfiua) is so frustrated that he now wants to develop an app that uses crowdsourced position data from GPS-enabled smartphones, without using OC Transpo data at all.

Councillors

OC Transpo should open its bus-location data to outside programmers the same day it launches its own application to tell riders when their buses are due, says Councillor Stephen Blais, and he intends to present a motion to the city’s transit commission at its next meeting ... to force the company to do it.

Ottawa Citizen - Councillor determined to have OC Transpo bus-location data opened to outside programmers - by David Reevely - January 23, 2012

Councillor Blais tweets @StephenBlais and his political page on Facebook is http://www.facebook.com/StephenBlaisOrleans

Blog coverage

• http://www.blackberrycool.com/2012/01/19/encourage-your-city-councillors-and-government-to-make-data-open/
• http://kevino.ca/content/heres-how-easy-oc-transpos-open-data-should-be
• http://trashysworld.ca/2012/01/21/oc-transpo-greediness/

History

We've been fighting this fight for over a year.  Here's David Reevely reporting February 14, 2011: The open-data battle continues with OC Transpo.

Previously
January 19, 2012  In the news: Fight for Ottawa realtime transit open data
January 18, 2012  OC Transpo would rather have ads than open data

In the news: Fight for Ottawa realtime transit open data

UPDATE 2012-02-20: OC Transpo is now required by Transit Commission to release GPS open data by March 22, 2012 ENDUPDATE

Extensive reporting on the January 18, 2012 Transit Committee meeting in Ottawa, where the transit agency OC Transpo's update on open data was that they didn't want to release it.

OC Transpo runs an entirely bus-based transit network.  The main issue at hand is getting the agency to release the realtime position data, from GPS systems already installed (or in some cases soon-to-be installed) on the buses.  OC Transpo does provide standard static transit schedule data in GTFS format, but the realities of road conditions (particularly in winter) mean that the official schedule often doesn't match the actual bus arrival times.

Of particular concern were OC Transpo's assertions that it was difficult and unwise to release the realtime data, an unusual position considering that Toronto and Winnipeg already provide this type of data.

Vehicle locations and next vehicle arrival predictions are in real-time.

toronto.ca/open - Data Catalogue » TTC Real-Time Next Vehicle Arrival (NVAS)

a real-time picture of what is currently happening on the streets, with information about our city-wide service status, which individual buses are delayed and by how much, the estimated arrival times of buses at stops, and more.

Winnipeg Transit's Open Data Web Service - API Overview

News Coverage

• Ottawa Citizen - Transpo opposes live data release on buses - by David Reevely (@davidreevely)
• Ottawa Citizen - Who's driving this bus? Not the public, apparently, as city cuts taxpayers off from right to information - by Joanne Chianello (@jchianello)
• Metro News Ottawa - OC Transpo recommends reneging on open data promise - by Jessica Smith
• 580 CFRA News - Councillors Grill Mercier over Open Data for OC Transpo GPS Info - by Stephanie Kinsella with Kristi Soble
• Open File Ottawa - Alain Mercier faces tough questions over OC Transpo data release - by Trevor Pritchard (Disclaimer: uses substantial amount of information from my previous blog post about the TC meeting)
• CBC News - OC Transpo bus data all about the money
• YourOttawaRegion.com - OC Transpo backtracks on bus GPS release - by Laura Mueller (@LauraEMueller)

It's important to understand the OC Transpo is... and isn't part of the city (that's part of what this battle is about).  The city itself has made great strides with open data, the short URL for the initiative is

ottawa.ca/opendata

and there is a dedicated open data lead on staff, Rob Giggey (@rob_giggey).

The council also has two strong defenders of the city's open data policy in Councillors Tim Tierney (@TimTierney) and Marianne Wilkinson (@Marianne4Kanata).  They really understand that open data brings new ways of working and new opportunities.

Ottawa's local open data advocacy group Open Data Ottawa (@opendataottawa & on Facebook at fb.com/opendataottawa ) has also been pushing hard on the realtime transit open data front.

If you're someone who is interested in this data (as a citizen and/or a developer) you can help by letting Councillors Tierney and Wilkinson know of your support (as well as telling Mayor Jim Watson @JimWatsonOttawa and your local councillor) and by letting Open Data Ottawa know how you would like to use the data and what we could do to help.  For what it's worth, you could also tell OC Transpo (@OC_Transpo) itself.  Good hashtags to use are #octranspo and #opendata

Although I've listed lots of Twitter contact IDs, you can of course use all the regular postal mail, email, telephone, and Facebook channels to let the city and OC Transpo know what you think.

Previously:
January 18, 2012  OC Transpo would rather have ads than open data

OC Transpo would rather have ads than open data

UPDATE 2012-02-20: OC Transpo is now required by Transit Commission to release GPS open data by March 22, 2012 ENDUPDATE

Ottawa Transit Commission just had its January 18, 2012 meeting and the OC Transpo representatives, including General Manager of Transit Services, Alain Mercier got a lot of questions when they came out with the assertion that Commission had to choose between completely in-house ad-supported applications from OC Transpo, and open data.

This is an absolutely classic bureaucratic organisation power play.  It's about control, not technology.  OC Transpo went as far as to assert that only they could "understand" the complexities of transit enough to produce "reliable" apps.  In other words, "this is a hard problem, so no one outside our organisation should bother us with trying to solve it".  This not only goes against the worldwide trend of opening up information and development in the understanding that "many eyes" are better, as well as the already demonstrated success of open data approaches in much larger jurisdictions, notably New York, Chicago and Boston.

OC Transpo is apparently saying "sure giant cities with millions of daily travelers on multiple modes of transit can trust developers with their open data, but our little bus-based system is way more difficult than that".

They are also making this strange argument that they "support" open data (as they have already publicly stated) but they don't "support" it so much that they actually want to do it, they'd rather have an exclusive ad contract.  A situation which, I might ad, puts the entire burden of internal IT, maintenance, and keeping up with ever-changing web and mobile trends on OC Transpo.  Do we really think being a software developer should be a core competency of our transit agency?

I've tried as best I could to capture and sort the discussion on Twitter.  Ottawa's media are skilled users of Twitter, I was fortunate to have so much to work with... but there was so much from so many fronts that I'm sure it is both confusing and missing tweets.

Thanks to

• @davidreevely
  and his livetweeting on @reevelylive
• @lauraemueller
• @jchianello
• @JonathanWilling

and thanks also to Councillors Wilkinson (@marianne4katana) & Tierney (@TimTierney) for defending Ottawa's open data policy and putting hard questions to OC Transpo.