Government launches new transport data strategy

The government has published its new Transport Data Strategy, which sets out plans for the greater use of data in transport and aims to improve how people find, use and get value from transport data to support greater innovation in the sector and deliver better services.

Better use of transport data use can improve interconnectivity between different types of transport, support the development of journey-planning apps and improve their accuracy, ultimately helping to make it easier for people to use and plan journeys.

Data can also help unlock additional benefits, such as new products and services for customers, while supporting employment opportunities in the transport sector.

Unlocking transport data can also help the government achieve the green transport objectives of the Transport Decarbonisation Plan. The Office for Zero Emission Vehicles is currently working with industry to make public chargepoint data openly available which will drive the growth of mobile apps that will enable drivers of Electric Vehicles (EVs) to plan their journeys and locate and access chargepoints with ease. The same data will enable EV network operators to optimise their charging networks and provide government, public authorities and electricity network operators with the data they need to effectively plan for any future interventions, as well as investment required to grow and improve the UK’s charging network. We also plan to incorporate EV charging availability into Mobility as a Service (MaaS), as well as standardised carbon data.

The Transport Data Strategy focuses on 5 key ambitions, including: improving data sharing to benefit transport users; promoting data standards; improving data skills in the workforce; ensuring appropriate governance and communication with the sector; and providing leadership and support for the sector.

As part of the strategy, the government is launching the ‘Find Transport Data’ pilot, a data catalogue to make it easier for innovators, researchers and others to find transport data, and ultimately deliver efficiencies and help improve services for customers.

In addition, the strategy also considers data ethics to help guide the sector to ensure data is used appropriately and responsibly.

Along with the strategy, the government will publish a number of data sets and tools to help kickstart better data use in the sector. This includes Local Authority Transport Data Guidance, which is a web-based tool to help councils use and share their transport data.

NaPTAN (National Public Transport Access Node) Discovery explores how the existing NaPTAN data set could be improved, such as the inclusion of accessibility data – NaPTAN is a dataset that details all the bus stops and rail stations in the country.

The government will also publish work from an HMT Economic Data Innovation Fund project with the urban observatories in Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle on cataloguing, opening and visualising the transport-related data from their sensor networks, and will publish a process evaluation report: this report details the evaluation of some of DfT’s data projects and assistance provided to other public bodies in designing and implementing their data projects.