City council aims for surge in public transport app development following successful demonstrator project
Bristol City Council has extended its commitment to its public transport API following a 12-month demonstrator project with mobile app specialists Urban Things.
A spokesperson for the company said the move will enable it to increase the number of data sources made available through the API, going beyond the initial focus on buses to other indicators such as train times and car parking facilities.
The public release of the Bristol API will feature live bus and train times, stop and station locations, route maps and journey planning for the south-west of England.
The company said it is also providing software development kits for Android and iOS, to support developers building solutions. This will help to integrate the API with other smart city projects.
“Bristol City Council wants more people using its public data to come up with solutions to support people in their travel,” the spokesperson said. “We’re trying to do something similar to what Transport for London has done in laying the ground for the development of large numbers of apps.”
Urban Things said that Bristol API has received more than 300,000 calls per month from hundreds of users who signed up to take part in the demonstrator project. It has also partnered with the council in hosting quarterly development engagement events, where local professional and independent developers have taken place in hackathons.
Image: Geof Sheppard, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
