Platform: Plan a Journey
Coverage area: London metropolitan area
Stakeholders:
- Transport for London (TfL) – transport authority: Plan a Journey department
- Transport operators: bus (private companies), metro (TfL), National Rail (national government), Overground, DLR, river bus, shared bike (TfL)
- TfL’s departments responsible for each mode of transport
- MDV in Germany (‘data system’)
Organisation and management: TfL is responsible for all transport strategy, going beyond public transport and including all surface transport, including urban planning, traffic management strategies, congestion charges, taxis etc. TfL has a department dedicated to the gathering, treatment and publication of all data collected from the different transport modes included in the platform. This department manages Plan a Journey.
Platform is not part of TDM initiative at TfL – Plan a Journey is not within TDM department.
Source of funding: TfL – Mayor of London
Initial investment: N/A
Development history: the journey planner became available in the early 2000s.
Modes of transport included: National Rail, Bus, London Overground, metro, River Bus, Emirates Air Line, DLR, TfL rail, tram, coach
Service Features: The platform’s core components are information on bus and railway stops/stations. In general it provides (i) multi-modal public transport or bike or walking journey planner, (ii) trip duration estimate, (iii) real-time planning and situational info, (iv) personalised preferences – option amongst fastest route, route with least walking, route with least transferences, (iii) personalised needs – users with special accessibility requirements.
Source of data: each transport provider supplies the Plan a Journey department with the respective data.
Data flow: (i) bus feeds are automatically imported to the platform; (ii) metro data goes to the back office system (MDV) that tests all data accuracy before they are included in the platform; (iii) smaller modes have their data provided in excel files and these information are manually inserted in the platform; (iv) national railway provides blocks of data weekly (TfL does not run the process in this case). This requires that the department responsible for Plan a Journey keeps in close and constant contact with all TfL departments in order to obtain information to be able to publish notifications on services related to stops, disturbances and schedule.
Open data policy: Plan a Journey has a unified API and that single API is also provided to developers interested in creating apps.