The Bus Open Data Service will provide customers with real-time location data of buses in England. … [+]
The UK government has announced the launch of a system that exploits big data to provide bus passengers with real-time travel info, something which it hopes will make public transport a more painless and satisfactory experience for travellers. Due to launch in early 2020, the Bus Open Data Service will share public transport data with third parties, creating new commercial opportunities while also raising niggling privacy fears.
On the face of it, the Bus Open Data Service is nothing but a big win for bus users. The platform will make bus location data, fare data, and even data about in-bus services (e.g. free WiFi) available in real-time to passengers in England. As such, it promises to make bus travel more efficient and consumer friendly, potentially ending the days of waiting out in the cold for a bus that never seems to arrive.
At the heart of this platform are the government’s plans to standardise and share all relevant data collected by bus operators across England. Information on routes and timetables will be made available to users and third parties within the first quarter of next year, while data on bus locations and fares will be accessible from January 2021.
Not only will the availability of such data enable bus users to plan their journeys and accurately calculate costs, but it will also provide the raw digital material through which tech companies will develop a whole new ecosystem (the government hopes) of apps and “products to improve connectivity for communities and encourage more people [to] turn to public transport.”
Speaking of the imminent launch, Bus Minister Baroness Vere said, “By harnessing the transforming power of data and technology we could be on the threshold of a golden age for buses. Sharing data on routes, bus locations and fares will give passengers even more confidence to ride.”
The launch is a significant victory for big data. Occasionally derided as a faddish megatrend or empty buzzword, the announcement of the Bus Open Data Service shows that national governments are willing to harness masses of data and use them to create new services and economic opportunities. Similarly, it’s also a victory for the internet of things, insofar as real-time data from buses will be involved in providing users with up-to-date travel info.
That said, the involvement of big data inevitably invites fears surrounding privacy and surveillance. In its press release and related communications, the UK government has highlighted only that it will be opening up data specifically about buses and their locations. However, it’s inevitable that this foundation will be built upon by third parties in such a way that passenger data will also be collected and shared.
As noted by the UK Department for Transport in the consultation paper it published in March 2019, the Open Bus Data Service will “support downstream innovation and creation of applications, products and services by application developers for existing and prospective bus passengers.” Such products and services for individual bus passengers implies that personal data will need to be collected. At the very least, this will entail the collection of enough personal data to open an account with the service (or services), while at the most, it could imply that personal travel data will also be collected.
To those with ‘nothing to hide,’ the recording of where you travel each day on buses might seem completely innocuous. Nonetheless, as isolated instances of people being wrongly convicted as a result of smartphone-based geolocation data reveal, this certainly isn’t a completely risk-free practice. It’s for this reason that, while we can certainly welcome more reliable bus location data, we need to remain vigilant that the Open Bus Data Service doesn’t insidiously morph into another dangerous example of surveillance capitalism.
The Department for Transport has been contacted for comment.
