Open Standard for transport account interoperability

On Friday 3 January 2020, the Open Transport Initiative - an initiative in the United Kingdom - launched the first version of the Open Transport Application Programming Interface (API) specifications. The standards are designed to support the development of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) initiatives by enabling customers to access data held in separate accounts with various other transport operators and agencies. They were developed with input from around 20 transport operators, authorities, and technology suppliers and are freely available for adoption by any organisation in the UK.

The specifications created and launched are:

1. Customer-account API: a standard way to facilitate peer-to-peer data sharing and account interoperability. This will allow a customer to view all their data from various operators in one place as well as journeys made across multiple transport modes (including tickets and details on additional services like parking and refreshments).
2. Centralised Operator-info API: a centralised look-up designed to provide an operator directory service for all transport operators and MaaS platforms. This transport directory service will provide unique reference information on each mode of transport or organisations, including any publicly available customer-account API locations.

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