One of the Finnish transport administration’s goals is to provide space for market-driven operators to develop services aimed at passengers, such as journey planners and MaaS. Traficom encourages all operators to contribute to the operation of the transport data ecosystem.
Read more about the transport data ecosystem (External link) (in Finnish)
The new Act on Transport Services introduced some changes to the national aggregation of public transport route, stop and timetable information, opening new opportunities for companies providing passenger information services. Now providers of transport services are opening their route and timetable information via open APIs, making them directly available to other operators and service developers. Information on the APIs is published on the NAP service (External link).
Traficom to continue maintaining the Matka.fi journey planner for the time being
Traficom will continue to maintain the national journey planning service Matka.fi for the time being. Supplying information for the matka.fi service is voluntary. As such, users of the journey planner are urged to verify the availability of market-driven transport services, especially bus services, by contacting the relevant transport operator directly or using other journey planning services, as not all market-driven operators supply information for the matka.fi service. Traficom does not guarantee that the suggested transport services are actually available and will provide no compensation for any costs resulting from a suggested route not being viable.
Cooperation with Digitransit
Digitransit is a service maintained by the joint local authority HSL Helsinki Region Transport, traffic control company Fintraffic Oy and TVV LMJ Oy:n (Waltti cities) (www.digitransit.fi (External link)). Digitransit is an open source product that provides a platform for the development of national journey planners, including matka.fi (External link). In addition to the service maintainers, Digitransit is also utilised by external service developers. Traficom contributes to the funding of Digitransit.
Fintraffic supplies specific route and timetable information for the Digitransit service. This means that the contract-based transport services of cities and ELY Centres and services digitised with the RAE tool are still saved in the public transport aggregate database and relayed to Digitransit and Matka.fi insofar as the information is not relayed to Digitransit from other sources. Information supplied by VR and Finavia is also saved in the aggregate database for the time being. This supports the preservation of the passengers’ information base regarding the aforementioned modes of transport and makes it possible for service developers to create journey planning services for end users outside of urban areas as well.
Transport service providers are encouraged to engage in cooperation to ensure that Digitransit continues to serve as a source of comprehensive transport information and open APIs via which the information can be utilised in journey planners, for example. Many Finnish cities are already contributing to Digitransit as a result of the coordination efforts of TVV LMJ Oy.
Traficom encourages the development of passenger information services
Comprehensive journey planning and passenger information services promote the use of transport services and the development of travel chains. Traficom strives to promote the high-quality and comprehensive development of service, route and timetable information and market-driven services that utilise them.