On 2 February, the DATA4PT consortium held the first of two plenary meetings for 2021. It was an opportunity for UITP, ITxPT and the EU Member States to present their project progress to the other consortium members. The project is now well underway, and the activity increases within the experts’ team and the Member States. In most cases, the Member States have launched National Access Point pilots and, in one case, even a National Access Point in full production.
ITxPT, as the implementation body, together with DATA4PT’s Experts Team, supports the Member States in implementing the National Access Points and contribute to the definition of rules for the national profiles that each Member State will set up. The national profiles define what information – and in what form – should be available through the National Access Points. The national profiles must be at least as comprehensive as the EU profile. At the meeting, ITxPT encouraged the Member States to ask for support to the DATA4PT team.
Furthermore, EU Member States outside the consortium can reach out to ITxPT to get help. There is also a list of tools for different purposes available on the Data4PT wiki page.
DATA4PT has ongoing liaisons with several different organisations, like CEN, DATEX, ISO, Shift2Rail, and MobilityData (GTFS). There are some activities currently going on, like requests to change elements of the SIRI and TRANSMODEL data models.
The Member States attending the meeting had the opportunity to present their progress in implementing National Access Points, the stakeholders involved and the challenges they are facing. They expressed the importance of having conferences and workshops with stakeholders. The sessions are essential for PTOs and local PTAs to get information about standards like NeTEx, SIRI, and TRANSMODEL. Other stakeholders involved on a national level are universities, standardisation bodies, private industry actors, and research institutes. DATA4PT will provide training material for the national organisations to use. Some of the Member States will translate the material to their language.
The Member States are looking to improve the quality of analysis tools and validators, make their platforms more reliable, elaborate use cases, and establish an automated way to transform data to NeTEx. It is also a challenge to find a way to help smaller PTOs with limited technical resources and know-how to supply data in the right format.
An essential aspect of the DATA4PT project is to raise awareness and spread knowledge. Several dissemination activities are going on: ITxPT and UITP are developing a collaboration tool and a knowledge database on the DATA4PT website, harmonising tit with the Transmodel website. Also, a new website specifically for SIRI is currently under construction.