Open Delays

http://wemove.center/joomla/index.php/blog/item/104-open-delays

Open Delays aims to disclose a specific kind of transport datas : the delays.

Today, planned timetables of future trips have become generally available in multiple formats. Delays of the last hours of the day are also accessible on the train website, so you know wether your current train is on time. But the accumulated delays data are generally not available : you don't find easily the accumulation of passed exploitation data of a given train line during the last year. We think that the users should have access to delays data, and for sure the company that operates the trains, or a government office, should not be the only ones to access this data.

Our goal with Open Delays is to gather exploitation data, and make it accessible to the users. With Open Delays, you could know for example that the train you are stepping in, had this last year 15mn delay in 30% of its trips : you can prepare for a probable delay on your trip ! Outside of the single traveller needs, such an overview on exploitation data is also a powerful way to make service quality more transparent, and identify precisely where are the structural problems.

Until recently, companies were very reluctant to realease that data. Now, times and minds have changed, and public transport institutions find quite normal that users can access exploitation data, even if they don't publish them actively. So we are happy to propose this tool, that allows the user to get an enhanced vision on transport exploitation.

This initiative in publishing delays data is not new, but we try to propose a new approach : we propose a tool that is reusable for any transport system, and insist on the openness of delays data. We expect that Open Delays will be re-used into other solutions and applications, and that this will contribute to improve users' quality of life.

Technical aspects and project aim:

• A short program in python that picks-up one hour of data from www.Railtime.be website, and converts it into a CSV (comma-separated values) format.

• Our aim is limited to gather the data, and for the moment not to perform additional statistics or queries on it, or user interface.

• Periodically, the gathered databases will be shared on our website in different ways (CSV, Excel/ODS sheet or directly viewable).

• Fields gathered: date, hour, train number, train type, departure station, departure time and arrival station, delays at arrival station.

• Open Delays: Copyright 2014, WeMove & Samuel Jouan, GNU GPL v3.