

Why (UK) train departure information is not open data. - eroded
http://placr.co.uk/blog/2011/05/why-train-departure-information-is-not-currently-open-data/

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singular
This is unbelievable. Do you think, if I decided to catch coaches/buses
everywhere, I could get back some of the money they get from me?

The fact that a publicly-funded organisation refuse to allow access to data
because they have been criticised is absolutely scandalous. They get our money
for free then dare to get shirty about the people who are _funding them_?!!

The railway service in the UK is appallingly bad, the majority of the rest of
Europe appear to have worked out how to actually make trains work, and yet
they have the cheek to do this. Unbelievable.

I'd like to write an app that tracks lateness round the UK and name + shame
operators who are doing poorly. I strongly suspect official results are
somewhat skewed by averaging/etc., and by focusing on hotspots/representing
the data differently you could get a more accurate picture. Doing so would be
critical of the rail operators - would they refuse me a license? Would I have
to pay for the privilege of determining how effectively my (+ the rest of the
people of the UK's) money was being spent?

It's like handing over £50 to somebody and them charging you for the
privilege.

£5bn a year and we still have to pay for tickets - must be nice to be in a
business where you get money for free THEN GET TO CHARGE FOR YOUR SERVICE ON
TOP OF IT.

Sorry, angry, but legitimately so I think.

~~~
batterseapower
It's hardly unusual for entities that receive government money to also charge
for products/services produced using that money. Three examples I can think of
just off the top of my head include 1) the health service in places like
France where there are subsidised usage fees, 2) farmers in the EU who get
large subsidies from the CAP or the equivalent in the USA, 3) application fees
in patent offices.

It is definitely super annoying that this data is not free, but the reality is
that it does cost a bit of money to gather and aggregate.

Furthermore, though I frequently take the train, I do consider it unfair that
general taxation revenues are used to fund the train services -- especially
considering that if you look at the stats they are principally used by the
wealthy. Charging for data goes some way to shifting the cost burden of rail
back onto the rail travellers themselves, as the person ultimately paying for
this data is the traveller that uses the train time app/website.

~~~
singular
I'm not contesting that entities which receive government money shouldn't
charge also if the economics implies it, rather focusing on the fact that they
take a _vast_ amount of taxpayer money which then helps fund greedy companies
who deliver giant bags of fail and on top of it all charge for information
which, let's face it, is something of a paltry cost to provide, really,
certainly as a proportion of the funding they receive.

We might not all use the services, but we are all certainly entitled to
investigate and examine how our money is being spent - standing in the way of
providing data for what appear to be money-grabbing reasons certainly does not
help redistribute the cost to rail users I don't think, and actively gets in
the way of highlighting less effective rail operators.

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mocko
I'm the Alex Hewson whose license got turned down for being critical of NRE.
Backstory @ [http://mocko.org.uk/b/2011/01/08/open-uk-rail-data-media-
cov...](http://mocko.org.uk/b/2011/01/08/open-uk-rail-data-media-coverage-
broken-appeals-process/)

There hasn't been any progress since I wrote that and it really does seem that
NRE are using the overly broad code of practice as a way to punish those who
question their attitudes.

Hardly a progressive way for a body that gets a large amount of public funding
to behave.

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sandoz
The joke of it is, if you dig around in the Live Departure Boards website
you'll see that they hook into an API here ..

[http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/en/s/ldb/liveTrainsJson?depart...](http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/en/s/ldb/liveTrainsJson?departing=true&liveTrainsFrom=WAE&liveTrainsTo=&serviceId=)

.. which is, basically, open for everybody to use (in the sense that it
requires no authentication). I use it myself to push live data to my mobile
phone from my desktop PC.

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halo
There are two further elements of this discussion that the article misses.

One is the fundamental approach to maximising value from government-created
works. Traditionally, the Crown owns the copyright and then sells them to
maximise revenue. The US approach is to make it public domain.

The second issue is that the bar for a creative work covered by copyright is
much lower in the UK than in the US. The notorious case is football schedules
which are copyrighted, but it also applies to cinema and train times.

~~~
Joakal
You seem to have misunderstood the source of train information. It's a private
company that's publicly funded. The Crown does appear to own the copyright.

~~~
halo
My point is that the article sidesteps a fundamental question about copyright
of government works.

If you believe that the correct way to maximise value is to use the data
commercially to maximise revenue then you won't see a problem with the current
situation.

If you believe that the correct way to maximise value is to provide the data
for free to end users then you'll think it's wrong.

The article implies the latter is true without argument, and implies it's the
norm in the UK.

~~~
deadbadger
Maximise the value for whom? The data is being monopolistically exploited by a
private entity, for private profit. Where is the value for the taxpayer there?

I think most people would agree that taxpayer value for public expenditure
should be maximised, and were the money from the licences going directly into
the public coffers then we could certainly have a discussion about whether
taxpayer value is maximised by selling the data or giving it away for free.

That, however, is not what is happening here. As so frequently happens in the
UK, the data is publically funded, and the profits are privately realised.

~~~
mseebach
The government pays the train operating companies to operate trains, not to
feed data to iPhone apps, just as they're not paid to sell crisps and sodas
from a small cart. This creates value (otherwise there would be no profit to
extract), so why not?

~~~
deadbadger
The government pays the train companies to run a transport service; departure
times are an essential part of that, in a way that crisps quite plainly (or
quite saltedly, ha ha ha* ) are not.

I agree that large-scale API provision is added value, and I have no objection
to a private company making a profit from that. What I object to is a private
company being handed a monopoly on that private data, with no effective
oversight being given to the terms under which they provide access to it.

ATOC, by dint of the exclusive licence granted to them by Network Rail, have
complete control of the market for this publically-funded data. They are
adding value by serving it as a reliable API, certainly; however the price
they are able to command has little relation to that value, because they have
no competitors.

* sorry

------
gorm
There has been a similar debate in Norway. According to law the public should
have free access to databases that is founded in companies that are own by the
public.

Companies with a monopoly or companies that have a political purpose and is
founded by the public would also be covered by the law of free access to
databases.

The company responsible for departure information in Oslo was very early with
open APIs and giving access to developers. Only clausal was that you couldn't
use it for commercial work. A couple of months ago they also removed this
clausal so now it's free, even for commercial usage. More info here:
<http://bit.ly/iq1pbT> (google translate)

------
nodata
When the trains are consistently late, the train company must refund a portion
of the money that rail ticket holders pay.

If the data was open, this process would become automated and cost the train
companies lots of money.

~~~
bruceboughton
Except most train delays in the UK are conveniently below the 30 minute
requirement for a refund. Often by just a few minutes...

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I don't think they'll actually be massaging the data, 30 minutes was probably
chosen to avoid paying for those delays.

~~~
themanr
They might be massaging the trains - given a choice between making five trains
28 minutes late or making one train 35 minutes late there is an incentive to
choose the former.

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pbhjpbhj
I'd have thought the answer is quangos.

But then I still don't understand why we, taxpayers, pay money to companies
that pay out profits. Loans, fine, but why are we paying money that just leaks
out in to shareholders bank accounts instead of being spent on transport and
its infrastructure.

~~~
rvkennedy
It's very simple, when you privatize something, it magically becomes cheaper.
Because of "efficiencies". The way this works is you can always get a private
company to pitch a service for a lower price than you're currently paying.
Then it's up to them to squeeze a profit from that service by providing a
lousy service. This is called "the power of the market". But because the
service is lousy, and the public doesn't like that, the government has to step
in and bribe the private company to make their service better. This is known
as "a public-private partnership", or PPP.

~~~
arethuza
Like for like, people in the public sector in the UK often get paid quite a
bit more than people in the private sector:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13329634>

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'd be quite interested to see the comparisons they make and the raw data they
use.

When I worked in the public sector the minimum wage came in and boosted a lot
of the low grades pay levels. At the time this was said to be an embarrassment
for the government as the minimum wage did little to similarly skilled workers
outside of the public sector.

Indeed where I worked practically any of the staff could work for
substantially more in an equivalent role in a private firm.

Teachers seem to get less money often in private sector, but benefits of
shorter terms, better discipline, better working conditions and the like help
considerably. Nurses in private employment seem to get quite a bit more.

What's equivalent to the police force?

Armed forces are supposedly poorly paid, but they get bed and board too.

> _The report said the gap - or pay premium - between what a typical public
> sector worker earns above their equivalent in the private sector has
> increased to 16.5% over the past two years for salaried workers.

_ But it says this has risen by 35% for workers paid by the hour, despite
efforts by the government to reduce the public sector wage bill.*

 _At the same time, real pay has fallen for the bottom 30% of private sector
workers._

/ Is this a case of damn lies and statistics. If private sector pay falls then
the gap widens, no? Is this article just about falling private sector pay due
to recession?

~~~
gaius
More cash perhaps - but the private sector can't offer a job for life nor a
gold-plated pension. Funny how people forget about those.

------
jsvaughan
The data is not inaccessible because it is a private company. It is because
they do not believe it to be in their business interest to make it accessible.

Why that is the case is the real question.

Surely the (presumably small amount of) money they raise from api
subscriptions and app sales (minus the development cost) would be hugely
outweighed by the increase in ticket sales + reduced dev cost from making the
data accessible.

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thehodge
I was actually angry when they revoked the licence for MyRail then introduced
a £5 app that did less under a different brand... I still haven't bought it

~~~
rvkennedy
You should try the hilarious spoof app on Android called "TheTrainline", which
introduces such innovations as:

\- its own, dysfunctional keyboard - because Android's keyboard was just too,
er, fast. And didn't have a bright green tick button.

\- an occasional feature, where after entering a timetable query a progress
bar appears, and the app commands you to "Tap the screen" to make the bar
advance. Once you have danced like a monkey for them, the app finally allows
you to see the result of your query.

\- no information about trains that depart in less than five minutes, or have
already departed. Because why would you ever want to know about the train
you're already on?

It really is a masterful satire of everything a corporate, money-grubbing app
commissioned by sociopaths and authored by embittered misanthropes would be -
an app that simply _hates_ its users.

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tobylane
The tube (which i use about once a year) is considerably better at this
(different, tighter consortiums). There are a bunch of good apps like Tube
Boards and Tube Status (if I used it more I'd pay for some). Even just that,
the current 30mins of the timetable, and any delays as a whole, would be a big
improvement on what there is now - announcements on the platform.

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drdaeman
Just a thought.

1\. Is data copyrightable, patentable or a trade secret? If not, follow the
next steps.

2\. Contact as much open-minded licensees as possible and persuade them to
leak the data.

3\. Build a service to collect the leaked data, collide several samples from
varying origins to remove any "watermarks" (and constantly monitor for them),
and publish it.

4\. If the condition (1) stands true, the leak service should be legal
(IMNAL), and service provider can't be obliged to say who's leaking the data.

5\. ...

6\. PROFIT^W PROTEST!

Childish, and somehow risky (the (2) is tricky), but given enough power, the
information could be made public.

If the departure times are copyrightable — there's something really wrong with
copyright system.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>1\. Is data copyrightable, patentable or a trade secret? If not, follow the
next steps.

It could be copyright and trade secret however the important IPR to consider
here is database rights.

[http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-otherprotect/c-databaseri...](http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-otherprotect/c-databaseright.htm)
<http://www.out-law.com/page-5698>

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wallflower
If you are interested in transit-related information access, consider signing
up for the very low-traffic but occasionally interesting Transit Developers
group.

<http://groups.google.com/group/transit-developers>

~~~
imrehg
Awesome, thanks!

I live in Taipei where the transport company holds back similar data for bus
and subway. It's a bureaucratic nightmare and also public/private confusion
just like in this post.

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drpancake
I wrote to my local MP about this issue and only got a pre-canned response
back. As this only affects the public indirectly there's simply no pressure to
change the status quo; priority will always be given to delays and capacity.

