Transport market transformation and growth require openness and sharing data with others – Traficom’s oversight has already produced results
The Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom promotes the high quality and smoothness of mobility services both in cities and sparsely populated areas. In the development of new mobility services, open application programming interfaces (API) play a key role. Traficom has taken action to ensure that, for example, transport service providers Matkahuolto, VR and HSL provide open APIs.
“We actively promote open interfaces because developing a new mobility as a service (MaaS) culture requires us to change our old practices and ways of thinking. Therefore, open interfaces to the data and systems of individual operators should be seen in a wider context, and, if necessary, we must take firm action to ensure that the Act on Transport Services is applied to all operators in an equal manner,” says Director-General Kirsi Karlamaa from Traficom.
Traficom oversees compliance with the pro-competitive provisions of the Act on Transport Services
During the spring, Traficom’s API activities focused on overseeing the lawfulness of road and rail transport operators’ interfaces. Among other actions, Traficom ordered, subject to a penalty payment, the bus and coach service company Matkahuolto to change the terms and conditions of its API to essential data by allowing timetable data to be disclosed to third-party service providers. “We discussed the matter with Matkahuolto in very good cooperation, and they amended their terms and conditions to reflect the objectives of the Act. It was wonderful that we did not need to enforce the penalty payment,” Karlamaa says.
The state-owned railway company VR, on the other hand, has not implemented an API to allow users to perform transactions on behalf of another party, as required by the Act, because VR intends to make significant changes to its sales system and channels in 2019. VR has informed Traficom that it will provide the opportunity to act on behalf of another party during October. VR has been required to report to Traficom about its schedule of creating the API for this, and Traficom will closely monitor its progress.
Traficom has also laid down its views on the lawfulness of certain features of acting on behalf of another party in a decision issued to HSL, a public transport operator in the Helsinki region. According to the decision, strong identification cannot be the only identification method used for acting on behalf of another party. “The decision provides guidelines for how the opportunity for acting on behalf of another party should be implemented in practice and clarifies the rules for other operators as well. To enable genuine travel chains, acting on behalf of another party should not be too complicated. It should be noted that the Act on Transport Services does not require strong identification,” Karlamaa says.
In the autumn, oversight activities will focus on the APIs of aviation operators.
New services through cooperation
The creation of new and innovative services highly depends on close cooperation and experiments between different operators. Traficom encourages both old and new operators to see this as an opportunity for new forms of business. “At Traficom, activities to develop the transport market focus on making everyday life easier for people and reducing the environmental burden of mobility by harnessing the opportunities of digitalisation, new mobility services and shared-use mobility,” Karlamaa says.
Read more:
https://www.traficom.fi/fi/ajankohtaista/liikenne-digitalisoituu-ja-muuttuu-palveluksi-yritysten-avatessa-rajapinnat (in Finnish)
Mobility service data accessible via APIs (in Finnish)
Enquiries:
Kirsi Karlamaa, Director-General, kirsi.karlamaa(at)traficom.fi, tel. +358 29 539 0403, on Twitter @KirsiKarla (External link)
Kimmo Pylväs, Head of Department, kimmo.pylvas(at)traficom.fi, tel. +358 29 534 5798