When a public festival affects traffic
Any major event alters traffic flows. A folk festival, a Bundesliga match or a city run can lead to road closures, diversions, temporary no-stopping zones and changes to public transport services. To ensure that these changes can also be taken into account in digital information and navigation services, they must be reliably available in the relevant systems. Only if, for example, a temporary closure is available digitally and can be processed by the respective services can it be factored into route recommendations or traffic information.
In practice, this data exchange still frequently takes place via various channels and formats. Discontinuities in data formats and differing data statuses consequently result in a high level of manual effort. At the same time, members of the public expect navigation services and information portals to provide up-to-date information at all times. It is therefore becoming increasingly important for local authorities to provide mobility data in a structured manner and to share it efficiently.
From data collection to digital value creation
The real challenge does not lie in generating data. Transport authorities, civil engineering departments and control centres already have extensive information on roadworks, traffic diversions, road closures and parking facilities. What is crucial, rather, is to make this data available in a format that can be processed by different applications.
This is because mobility data is generated in very different technical contexts. Information on a roadworks site has a different structure to timetable data, details on car-sharing vehicles or information on available parking spaces. For cross-platform use, this data does not necessarily need to be converted into a single format. Rather, it is important to use established standards and clearly defined interfaces for the respective data types.
The MOBIDROM data platform in North Rhine-Westphalia demonstrates how this can work in practice. Here, mobility data from various sources is centrally consolidated, harmonised and made available via standardised interfaces. The platform supports various established standards, including DATEX II, GTFS, GTFS-RT, GBFS and MDS.
These standards cover different areas of mobility: DATEX II, for example, is used for road traffic data such as roadworks, closures, temporary traffic restrictions or parking information. GTFS is used in particular to provide static public transport data such as timetables, whilst GTFS-RT supplements this with real-time information on, for example, delays, cancellations or route changes. GBFS enables the standardised exchange of information relating to shared mobility, such as the availability of bicycles or e-scooters. MDS, in turn, supports, amongst other things, the exchange of data between local authorities and sharing providers, for example when communicating municipal restricted and prohibited zones.
The example of the MOBIDROM data platform illustrates the contribution that common data standards and centralised platforms can make towards significantly simplifying the exchange of information between local authorities, transport operators and digital mobility services.
Why data quality is key to success
Traffic management can only be as good as the data on which it is based. Incorrect or out-of-date information can have a direct impact on traffic flows and the user experience.
This is why quality assurance for mobility data is becoming increasingly important. Modern platforms now offer functions for validating and transforming data before it is catalogued and made available via interfaces. The checks that can be carried out depend on the specific data format and the connected source – but this can also improve data quality in the long term. For local authorities, this means less manual checking work whilst ensuring greater reliability of the information provided.
Added value for local authorities and transport management
The benefits are not limited to the provision of data for external services. Even within local authorities, a shared data foundation can open up new opportunities to optimise mobility concepts and the infrastructure planning required for them. Appropriate data quality forms an important foundation for this. Through shared provision and structured processing, data can be better compared, linked and utilised for further analysis. Additional insights arise in particular through the derivation of new information, the cross-referencing of different data sources and the expert evaluation of the results.
This gives rise to new use cases: from intermodal journey planning and the evaluation of transport measures to the intelligent management of mobility services. At the same time, the effort required to integrate new applications can be reduced, as data provided once can be reused multiple times. However, whether and how this reuse takes place depends on the specific dataset, the access conditions and the particular application scenario.
The foundation for tomorrow’s mobility services
As transport becomes increasingly digitalised, the demands on data availability and interoperability are also rising. Connected transport systems, digital twins of infrastructure and AI-supported analyses require up-to-date, high-quality and standardised information.
Central mobility data platforms provide the technical foundation for the exchange and utilisation of mobility data. They connect different stakeholders and enable the integration of further data sources into information and routing services. They do not, however, automatically solve all the challenges posed by the digitalisation of mobility. However, they do lay the groundwork for making data systematically available, establishing standards and interlinking different information services.
Individual local authority datasets are thus transformed into interconnected information services that benefit citizens, transport operators and public authorities alike. This is precisely where the circle closes with the local festival: if the relevant road closure information is made available digitally at an early stage, in a structured manner and to an appropriate standard, it can be incorporated by various services and taken into account in mobility planning. Local information thus becomes a dataset that can have an impact across a range of digital services.
