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Urban Transport Group report urges industry to ‘get smart on data’

Posted: 9 December 2016 | Katie Sadler, Intelligent Transport | No comments yet

A new report published by the Urban Transport Group has called on transport authorities and UK legislation to keep pace with vast volumes of data generated through travel enabling improved customer services.

Kelois and IVADO partner to develop mobility solutions through big data

A new report published by the Urban Transport Group has called on transport authorities and UK legislation to keep pace with vast volumes of data generated through travel enabling improved customer services.

Urban Transport Group report urges industry to get smart on data

The report, entitled Getting Smart on Data, outlines the opportunities that come from data, saying: ‘Data will mean transport users will become far more fully informed about their travel choices whilst at the same time it will transform the ability of transport authorities to plan and manage transport networks and services more efficiently and effectively.’ Furthermore, the report identifies four key challenges on getting the most from emerging transport data.

Urban Transport Group four key challenges on getting the most from transport data:

  1. Sharing and integration: including deciding who is best placed to develop practical applications from data to ensure it benefits transport users
  2. Ownership and privacy: including protecting privacy while sharing data sets to maximise their value
  3. Quality and standards: including collecting the best quality data, putting it into useable formats and asking the right questions of it
  4. Skills, capabilities and capacities including ensuring we have the right skills to manage and analyse data in ways which benefit transport users and improve our decision making

The report also recommends that the Bus Services Bill and Modern Transport Bill should re-assert and guarantee individual privacy through data whilst ensuring that greater social and economic value can be created from this data.

Vernon Everitt, Managing Director for Customers, Communication and Technology at Transport for London and Urban Transport Group’s lead board member for Smart Futures said:

‘The Urban Transport Group is committed to improving transport services for the 20 million people we serve in the UK’s major cities. Big Data and Open Data has huge potential to help transform travel and we need to work together to make sure we are asking the right questions of the data we generate to make travel easier and more convenient and enable better decisions around infrastructure investment.’