Students open timetables of Belgian railway company
Two students have opened the timetables of the NMBS, the Belgian railway company, as open data. App-developers can use this data to build innovative and user-friendly apps, like smartwatch-applications or even an integration in the routeplanner of Google Maps.
You can access the data at http://gtfs.irail.be/nmbs
Three weeks have the two thought of a solution, during the project ‘open Summer of code’, where students work on a digital innovation, to open the timetables of the NMBS. By using a format, GTFS, is it possible to combine timetables of different transport companies. This way, country boundaries are not longer a problem.
This is a first step towards the ambitious open data-strategy of the federal government, that has been approved last Friday. This strategy forces government companies to publish their data free and accessible for re-use.
The data is now implemented in these intermodal services or apps: CityMapper, Ally, Navitia.io, and more are coming!
Walking to Hasselt station with @Citymapper. The first time I have a 100% realtime intermodal exp in Belgium @iRail pic.twitter.com/Lh6Wk1jANI
— Pieter Colpaert (@pietercolpaert) August 1, 2015
STUDENTEN OPENEN DIENSTREGELING VAN NMBS
Twee studenten hebben de dienstregeling van de NMBS als open data ter beschikking gesteld. App-ontwikkelaars kunnen deze gegevens gebruiken om innovatieve en gebruiksvriendelijke toepassingen te bouwen, zoals smartwatch-applicaties of zelfs een integratie in de routeplanner van Google Maps.
Je kan de data bereiken op http://gtfs.irail.be/nmbs
De voorbije drie weken bedachten de twee tijdens het project ‘open Summer of code 2015’, waar studenten aan een digitale uitdaging werken, een manier om de uurregelingen van de NMBS open te stellen. Door een erkende standaard te volgen, GTFS genaamd, is het mogelijk om dienstregelingen van verschillende transportbedrijven te combineren. Zo kunnen app-ontwikkelaars applicaties bouwen over landsgrenzen heen.
Hiermee is de eerste stap gezet in de ambitieuze open data-strategie van de federale overheid, die vorige week vrijdag is goedgekeurd. Deze strategie verplicht overheidsbedrijven om hun publieke gegevens gratis open te stellen voor hergebruik.
De data werden nu al opgenomen door verschillende apps en diensten zoals: CityMapper, Ally, Navitia.io, en meer apps/services zijn in de maak!
2/3d of the iRail team at open summer of code 2015’s final event
We’ve got 2 students at open Summer of code 2015
In the April update we’ve shouted out for people who wanted to help funding students to work on iRail datasets during open Summer of code 2015. And guess what? We’ve had a response!
Thanks to #iSoc12 alumna Miet Claes and mentor Xavier Bertels from the company Mono, we will be able to hire Brecht Van de Vyvere to work on a way to create the best GTFS export of the Belgian railway company for 2015-2016 so far. The funding is now closed, yet we still accept contributions in the form of pull requests and issues!
Team @iRail represent m/ RT 'Made a first selection of #oSoc15 students. Time to assign them and see if it matches pic.twitter.com/qK3y3DlGfk '
— Brecht Van de Vyvere (@brechtvdv) June 11, 2015
A law for Open Transport Data in Belgium
Today is the day that the minister of the Digital Agenda Alexander De Croo announced to create a law before the summer that will oblige NMBS/SNCB to open up their data.
#digitalbelgium : open data de regel voor federale overheid en #NMBS. Betere klantenervaring & stimuleert innovatie. Wetsontwerp tegen zomer
— Digital Belgium (@digitalagendaBE) April 22, 2015
UPDATE: More info on the PSI directive and this tweet can be found here:
http://decroo.belgium.be/nl/dienstregeling-nmbs-moet-beschikbaar-worden-als-open-data
April updates
Railtime is gone! It was an app which was perceived by many users as an app which offered a better user experience than the official NMBS/SNCB app (an app bought from a German service provider which was adapted for Belgium). The app got shut down in an effort of NMBS/SNCB to streamline its communication channels: “it would be ridiculous to have to maintain 2 apps”.
Best alternatives for RailTime: 2 iRail based apps are mentioned: BeTrains and RailerApp
On this occasion, De Morgen wrote an article. In that article it is not only mentioning the efforts we have been doing, but it also advises its readers two alternatives for RailTime: one being BeTrains (an android app built on top of the iRail API) and the other being RailerApp (an iphone app built on top the iRail API). Couldn’t be more proud! In each case, it caused Railer installs to skyrocket:
Railer app installs skyrocketing after RailTime disappearing (installs per day)
De Morgen concluded that we need to strive for Open Data. Something we have been asking since 2010. With the press agreeing, minister Galant agreeing (cfr. her policy note 2015 in which she mentions open data) and our API which now handles an est. average of 300.000 requests per day, we hope that the NMBS/SNCB will take steps into opening up the data we value. In each case, we will be keeping a close eye on our mailbox.
With RailTime disappearing, we got a lot of questions whether the API would keep working. We answered these questions with a clear and sound “yes”. Yet, we didn’t take into account that the API endpoint providing information about specific trains used to work on top of the railtime mobile website instead of the NMBS/SNCB’s one (it used not to be able to give this kind of information). Luckily, @brechtvdv saved the day and wrote a new scraper into our code that was left unchanged since 2010. Thank you Brecht!
And fixing the Vehicle info bug wasn’t the only thing @brechtvdv did. He also started working on a The DataTank plug-in for automatically adding GTFS files. This will help start-ups and developers to get started with their own private API on top of data of De Lijn, MIVB/STIB and TEC. The code isn’t perfect yet, so we hope to receive feedback, issues and pull requests from everyone!
One day server load on http://irail.be – monitored on the new servers by SkyScrapers
In the meantime, we have also done a server migration together with SkyScrapers (they are part of our community for 3 years now and have ever since provided managed hosting). We are now running the last version of ubuntu, which gives us PHP5.4+! This is a huge relief for a lot of our coders: PHP5.4 introduces nicer syntax which was previously unsupported. Furthermore, a lot of composer packages dropped support for PHP5.3 a while ago. With our shiny new servers in place, I have defined a couple of issues which will make contributing to the API a lot easier and painless.
Gitter.im is now a service we use for our real-time collaborations on the entire iRail project
In order to be able to work together as a community more efficiently, we’re now on Gitter. It’s an instant messaging tool which integrates with Github. We hope to talk to you there! Oh, and if you really want to use IRC instead, there is a IRC bridge available at https://irc.gitter.im/
In order to fix all these issues, we’re looking for funding to pay for a team during open Summer of code 2015. Summer of code started out as iRail Summer of code back in 2011. It’s where we provide students with the training to take on open source and/or open data projects. This year we would like to have an iRail team. A team costs €6000. Anyone an idea how to raise such funds? If you’re willing to co-fund these students, please do contact me! pieter@iRail.be
FAQ: Railtime is stopping, can we (still) use your API?
In the past few days, we’ve got a lot of questions whether iRail will keep existing and what the impact of railtime disappearing will be on the iRail webservices.
Answer: iRail will keep existing and will keep publishing realtime data through http://api.irail.be. iRail has already moved away from railtime a while ago.
Happy coding!