[Transport] Public transport : open data and European regulation

European regulation governing transport data

Walid : Welcome to all. For this new episode of Projets Libres!, we’re going to resume the series on transportation, it will be the third episode. And since my main source of information on this subject, among other things, is FOSDEM, we will stay on a conference that stems from the FOSDEM 2025 conference room. To make a small introduction, it’s the first conference of the day after the intro, and here, our guest talks with two other people about a subject around European standards to serve both public transport and rail, talking about passenger information and ticketing.

And I said to myself at the end of the conference, “ok, I’d like to know more, but more about the human side of it, and not so much the standards and everything”, the conference was rather technical. And so, I wrote myself down in my notes, contact Tu-Tho Thai, who is our guest of the day. She is the leader and head of the standardization group dedicated to passenger information and the operation of mobility services. And today, we’re going to talk about European regulations and in fact, to know a little bit about how it works? Who are the people behind it, why are they doing this?

I think it’s going to be super interesting, it’s not going to be technical and a bit of an introduction to the subject. I’m really delighted, Tu-Tho, to have you with me today. Thank you for having responded positively to my invitation and welcome to the podcast Projets Libres!.

Tu-Tho : Thank you very much for the invitation. I’m excited to do this episode with you today.

Presentation of Tu-Tho Thai

Walid : You never know after a FOSDEM conference, there may be more things to say on the subject. So, the first question is a ritual one: I would like to ask you, please, to introduce yourself for the listeners of the Projets Libres! podcast, please.

Tu-Tho : Yes, of course, I’m based in Paris. And as you said, I lead the French standardization group which is dedicated to passenger information and the operation of mobility services. I also intervene as an independent expert at the level of the CEN, the European Committee for Standardization, on the same subject. Like many colleagues in the world, in standardization and passenger information, I am an independent expert on my own.

Walid : Your area of expertise, it covers pretty much what subject?

Tu-Tho : My real expertise, in all honesty, is not technical. So, that’s why I’m delighted, that we’re not doing a technical episode today. My expertise is really to lead a multicultural group. When we talk about standardization, it’s really groups of experts who can come from the world of IT, European regulations, industrialists, or people who are interested in applications, free software around passenger information and route planners. And the only expertise they found in me, and that’s why they appointed me, is to succeed in bringing together this extremely multicultural world. And my second expertise, though, because you have to justify the position of facilitator, is the whole European standards part, and I think that’s what will interest us today, really on their public transport part, in the passenger information dimension.

So, what’s important to note here is that I’m really not a transport expert. That is to say, I have never driven a bus, I have never organized a transport plan. But on the other hand, I have the expertise to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

Walid : How do you get into this subject of transport? Is it a coincidence? Is it encounters?

Tu-Tho : Well, I admit that it’s completely random. I came back to Europe after 12 years of expatriation in Southeast Asia…. COVID, that’s it, quite simply, we had to go back. And I was looking for something that was really in continuity with what I had done before, which was to build links between different people, between different groups, between different cultures. And also because I came back during the pandemic, I wanted to have a job that had an impact, I didn’t want to go and look at audit reports in taxes and all that, I think it didn’t correspond at all to what I wanted to do. And quite quickly, through my network, through the very good meetings I had, I was offered to work on public transport and on the whole part of standardization, telling me “you’ll see, you don’t necessarily need to have a lot of knowledge of the job, but you have to know how to listen to people, come and create links. And simply come and do some collaboration, and I said to myself, “Come on, I’ll like it, I’m going”.

The impact of COVID on the evolution of European standards

Walid : The first thing that interests me is to understand what are the problems that we encounter on all the subjects of route planning in Europe? Can you explain to us a little bit where we are at the beginning of the discussion, before this attempt at normalization at the European level? What is the panorama on this?

Tu-Tho: Yes, absolutely. So, it is important to know that standardization on passenger information began a very long time ago, but the pandemic, in the end, was a very good indicator of everything that was wrong, since there were many changes in transportation. And even in the living areas we were in, I think we were all a little lost. For example, to know how I go to the nearest hospital, knowing that it is no longer the usual buses that run or the frequencies of the metros are different. And all of this meant that all of a sudden, there was this spotlight on the fact that today, for a user like you and me, whether it’s in our living area, when it’s disturbed or when we travel or make long journeys in places we don’t know, We have a lot of trouble planning our trips. And that was something that was extremely important, because for most of us, we don’t have an extendable time to get from point A to point B. So we still like to know which bus I can take, what the train is, what the schedules are, what happens if I miss my connection.

And all these questions, they generated this kind of expectation from the user who said, “But why can’t I just do it on the Internet?” And in reality, the answer has many facets. Why is it not possible to do it, so simply in a route planner available on the Internet? This is either because the data was unevenly available in Open Data, so route planners had difficulty finding what they needed to make them available to users. When this data is available, it is not necessarily interoperable in the purely IT sense of the term, insofar as it has to be reprocessed all the time, because it is not always standardized, or if it is standardized, it is not the same understanding of the same standards, etc. And finally, simply because some players in the transport ecosystem had difficulty sharing their data, and still have difficulty sharing their data. It can be technical constraints.

Again, I was talking about the pandemic, which was the best example where, because transportation plans changed extremely often, the data sharing structure didn’t keep up. Sometimes, there are also questions of governance. Do I have the right to share the data? Does it belong to me? Can I put it in Open Data? If so, under what license? And finally, quite simply, there is a story of time. All these players, for them, are focused on making a transport offer work and not necessarily on sharing the description of passenger information.

Walid: Actually, it’s funny. Covid is causing a disruption of habits that brings out these needs.

Tu-Tho: Absolutely.

And that’s what it was, especially because I think we all realized, at the time of the pandemic, that we had taken it for granted to move and that we had taken for granted that if we were so connected today, we had to have all the information immediately. And all of a sudden, on this spotlight, say to yourself “hey, I don’t have a problem”. Not the fine description of the transport offer around me. I don’t have access to real time. I don’t know if I’m going to meet the deadlines. Depending on where you lived, you were allowed an hour and a half, two hours of outings a day. All of a sudden, everyone said to themselves “hey, there’s something stuck”. And to push things even further, that’s when the European Commission all of a sudden said to itself, “But it’s true, that, in one of our values, is to say, we have the free movement of people and goods. How do we help that?”

And that was really the catalyst to say, we have to sit down and think together, how can we do at several levels, so at the level of the European Commission, at the national and local levels, how can we really do to facilitate the free movement of people and goods?
Obviously, but here, it’s the people we’re interested in, once we’ve gotten over the pandemic. What do we put into action? To really come and feed this virtuous circle of saying, people need access to good information.

How the European Commission is taking up the subject of regulatory developments

Walid: And then, when you say, the European Commission says to itself “oh yes”, in fact, when it says to itself “oh yes, ok, there’s something to be done”, it’s because in fact people are complaining or are dissatisfied at the level of the Member States, and it’s the Member States that report this information to the European body of “ok, It’s a real issue, we have to work on it.” Basically, to get to the point of saying “ok, we, the European Commission, are going to work on this subject”, what does it take?

Tu-Tho: Actually, there are several things.

The European Commission, therefore, one of its values, as I said, is really the free movement of people and goods. We were built on a common market. So this is something where the European Commission has always taken up all the issues that help to achieve these values in people’s daily lives. So, for the purely public transport and passenger information part, these are elements that the European Commission has been working on for a very long time. The first directives date back to 2010, well before the pandemic.

On the other hand, what the pandemic has done is that we have realized that perhaps some of the implementing regulations of the European directives have not been sufficiently updated, or have not been sufficiently advanced to take into account the current needs of citizens, of people who live in Europe. And on this revision, it’s one that has been done on two levels. So there is the whole part of the request made by the Member States, which goes back to the European Commission so that it can work on a text. But there is also quite simply the work, let’s say, of studies carried out by both parliamentarians and employees, officials at the level of the central administration of the European Union, who are ultimately people like you and me. They too have this desire to say “I work in the administration, I was elected by people living in Europe to represent them, to represent their needs: there, there is indeed a real need, I take it up, and we work together” In a way, all the planets have been aligned so that the European delegated regulation, dedicated to multimodal passenger information, be completely revisited. And that’s really what made my presentation at FOSDEM what was about.

Changes introduced by COVID in the regulations

Walid: You’ve started to introduce it, but what comes out of revisiting this regulation?

Tu-Tho:

So, in this revision of the MMTIS Delegated Regulation for Multimodal Passenger Information, there have been two objectives in this revision. The first is to ensure that all people who live in the European Union or who travel have access to quality information. Which means the inclusion of real time information. It’s something that was less mature at the time of the first draft of these regulations and has really gained strength. At the time of the pandemic, everyone was talking about nothing but that, about real time passenger information. Then, there was a second objective to this review, which was to support the explosion of mobile applications and digital solutions that we really had during the pandemic, so at the end of 2019, the beginning of the 2020s, and we are still in it.

We saw it clearly: when everyone was confined to their homes, we really had an explosion of news sites led by citizens, people who were taking over the data, who had skills and who, all of a sudden, said “I’m building tools to share information as much as I can”. And that’s where there was this ripple effect and people were saying “we are in the process of revising a European delegated regulation, it would be good if we made sure that as much information as possible is made available to all citizens in Open Data, so that these new technologies can take hold of it”. And of course, by relying on the same norms, the same standards so that we are in tune with the information that is circulating.

What changes have been introduced by the revision of the regulations

Walid: In terms of application, does it consist of the creation of… What is created through this? What are the additional obligations? What does this new standard introduce? MMTIS

Tu-Tho: So, the delegated regulation distinguishes between two things. It is based on the existing directive called the ITS directive, which stands for Intelligent Transport System, the interconnected exchanges today in the world of transport, which has encouraged the creation of national access points for data related to the world of transport, but I will come back to this later, because it is really something different.

The MMTIS Delegated Regulation has really framed the opening of multimodal transport data. By specifying in a fairly detailed way all the data that makes sense for either a trip planner or a user. So it’s going to be a long list of categories of elements that seem completely obvious to us, that public transport operators or authorities have to go up to the regional and national level. So, for example… the list of stops, timetables, fare information, etc. It also added data that we knew, or at least assumed, was available within public transport services, such as real-time occupancy. It was really something that marked us all during the Covid period and which was added to this delegated regulation.

And this is really where this regulation has involved all the historical players in public transport, so the local authorities, the carriers, their suppliers, and therefore those who manage the transport offer. But it also involved a lot of the developers of IT solutions and mobile applications, because they came to ask for additional data. So there has really been a complete overhaul of the entire passenger information cycle, whether it is to produce it, quite simply, to publish it and to reuse it. So, we entered a space for dialogue that is starting to become very interesting, where we were leaving data for data’s sake, but really data to share information.

Regulatory compliance deadline

Walid: When there is a regulation that is issued like this, is there a deadline by which we must comply with this regulation?

Tu-Tho: Yes, absolutely. In all the regulations, there is an agenda that really details the dates that all people must comply with. So, depending on the country, the dates were more or less negotiated with all the stakeholders, but also with the regulatory authorities. Because in fact, when you put a date, a deadline, like in any project, you have to have someone in control behind it. There was still some latitude, especially on the compliance with standards on data sharing, when certain categories of data already existed.

Walid: Maybe it must be more complicated for some countries than for others? Some countries may be starting from further away.

Tu-Tho: yes, yes, absolutely. And in fact, that’s why while there are quite precise dates and a fairly precise calendar in all European regulations, there is also a certain latitude. It is understandable that on subjects, especially when they affect open data and digital technology, not everyone starts from the same achievements, but not everyone necessarily has the same technical infrastructure. And finally, there is also a question of the ecosystem of actors. Not everyone is necessarily mature at the same time to share their data, to standardize it and to appropriate all the standards that are recommended in European regulations.

The actors involved in the process

Walid: So, there, we talked about data producers, we talked about data re-users, for example citizens or applications. Are there other actors than producers and re-users?

Tu-Tho: There will be all the third parties, let’s say, in a way, that is to say all the people who work on solutions, let’s say, IT or software around the world of transport. So, for example, typically, it’s going to be supply management software publishers. So, planning, buses, timetables, etc. There will be all the people who offer screens, for example, to make passenger information available. There will also be all the people who will propose solutions to manage, aggregate different types of data, different data sources, to rework or standardize them, so to do it. So that they meet the requirements of European norms and standards. And then share them again. There will also be all the facilitators, and I was talking about this earlier, in particular the national access points (PAN) in all the countries, which are really responsible for opening up information to passengers, that is to say that they must, according to European regulations, act as the place where open transport data is deposited.

Using open standards: a no-brainer?

Walid: And this data, and therefore these standards, was it obvious, the fact that they had to be open standards? It’s really a question that I asked myself, that is to say… It seems absolutely obvious to me that we can only collaborate with open standards, but nevertheless, the question deserves to be asked. Are there people who have proposed closed standards around this? Or was it normal for everyone?

Tu-Tho: Yes, and no. It’s never obvious that a standard is open, in all honesty. In fact, it’s never easy that a project is open. As for European standards, which are mentioned in the delegated regulation, these norms and technical standards are defined within the CEN, so the European Committee for Standardization that I was talking about, which is really the standardization body in Europe that is a reference and the equivalent at the world level, is the ISO that everyone knows. We know that these standards are not always 100% open. There may be costs for accessing documentation. On the other hand, at the level of CEN and European standards, anyone interested in standards today can join the work of CEN. All you have to do is register through your national standardization body. So, in France, it’s AFNOR that we go through, to register as experts and come and contribute to it. There is no limit to the number of contributors. There is no pedigree to show, to know if you want to contribute or not. You just have to show interest. So, on that, everyone can work. We, on the public transport side, have made a choice that may be relatively radical, but which is very strongly linked to the fact that it is data exchanges, and therefore computer exchanges. We chose to work on GitHub and to offer XML schemas openly on a public directory on which anyone can contribute and use it. Because we realized quite quickly, though, that data exchanges are taking place between machines, that a lot of developers are going to work on it. So, giving PDF files is not very useful to explain how to make an XML file. On the other hand, the only pitfall of doing everything on GitHub like this is that it can be a step to climb for those who are less used to the GitHub and Git universe. And even more, you need to know where to find the workspace on GitHub. So that’s the part is the least obvious. That is to say that it always requires a lot of effort from us to disseminate, hence the fact that I was at FOSDEM to present it. But on the other hand, what has always been obvious to the whole group and all the experts is that we are open to any contribution.

Walid: Is choosing to go on GitHub something that is quite common or is it rather something new compared to other standardization processes? Do you know if there are other standardization processes that choose to go on an open platform like GitHub?

Tu-Tho: In the world of public transport, as I know, I think it’s a choice that is quite common. And at FOSDEM, I was thrilled to see that everyone was happily sharing lots of GitHub workspaces. And we could all contribute to each other’s projects. It is very specific to transportation in the sense that there is a very large amount of information / data being exchanged through software and IT systems. Would it be the same for aviation or any other sector? I have no idea as I am not an expert in those fields.

The place of free software in the process

Walid: And free software, in all this, does it have a special place? Are there already route planners or are there already people in the free software community who are interested in or following these topics?

Tu-Tho: So, a lot. And I can see that the use of free software is really growing. Finally… if I remember correctly, this year, at FOSDEM, we had at least three equivalents of trip planners who presented their solutions, so they are completely free and with calls for contributions. So it’s always nice to see that people have started to build solutions based on the efforts that have been made on the regulatory side, to open up this data and make it available. Because people finally data they could consume. So same as with open standards, I think the only pitfall will be the lack of visibility. But I have at least retained — so it’s going to be easy. We co-presented at FOSDEM all the tools that have been developed by Entur, so the Norwegian national access point, and in particular OpenTripPlanner, so OTP for the route planner, because they have always made this choice, to really always open everything.

This is something that is very, very strong in the Nordic countries. There were also, as co-presenters of my session, tools for enrichment, multimodal data and validation of the datasets that were presented. And really, I say to myself, that’s where it’s nice to see that there is so much software today that exists, that is on the market and that people can take advantage of. People can contribute to this to advance this issue, to enrich passenger information and to open it up to as many people as possible. So, not all of them necessarily have the same level of use or achievement, but we’re going to come up with subjects on which we are going to exchange, you and me, and maybe… Maybe we should make a next episode for the developers and ask them for their opinion.

The role of the Transport Regulatory Authority (ART)

Walid: One question I was asking myself was that last night, I was watching a conference of people from… the Transport Regulatory Authority (Editor’s note:
Session 2: ART controls, feedback and support actions of the NAP) . And so, they are also responsible for checking that the actors are indeed implementing the opening of this data.

Tu-Tho: Absolutely.

So they are the ones who have the role of regulation and control that I briefly mentioned earlier. Speaking of the timetable recommended by the European regulation and its compliance. So, that’s really the role that they have, is to check that. And the big advantage we have in France is that the ART is also a driving force in the use of European standards and their evolution. So they really also come to bring us back to the standardization working groups, where things can get stuck, the questions that people may have, etc. And also, so we were talking earlier about the calendar, they can also match their control schedule to the speed at which we work on the standardization side. Don’t blame someone for not having made the latest version of the standard if it has just been published, for example.

Walid: ok. So the national access point is a facilitator, and the ART controls and enforces, you know.

Tu-Tho: Exactly.

The legal forms taken by NAPs in different countries

Walid: One of the other questions I asked myself was the access point, what was their business model, in fact? Is the access point necessarily always supported by a state? Can it be, I don’t know, a delegation of public services? Does it take different forms depending on the Member State?

Tu-Tho: Yes, yes, yes. Long live freedom of conduct business in Europe, it can take all the forms we want, knowing that historically, it is still funding that comes from the State, or at least through national authorities. So it can be public service delegations (DSP), it can be agencies, it can be funding from a private operator. There really is everything that exists in Europe. The most important thing, in any case, is that it is really attached to a public service. That’s really what’s important because Open data today is up to the State to come and support it, to promote it. And this is really the choice that has been made by France, where the national access point is what is called a state start-up. So, it’s really very typical of what exists in France, but this has allowed them to very quickly appropriate free bricks, tools, to also come and offer, as I said earlier, thanks to specific developments, tools made available to the entire ecosystem. And to have its extremely agile approach to supporting the opening of data.

So, today, we are lucky in France to have this support from the State. I hope it stays that way because it’s good. The problem we have today is that all our public budgets throughout the European Union and throughout the world are beginning to be restricted. So there you have it, let’s say that the wish I have is that all public authorities continue to support free software and Open Data.

Walid: Two questions. The first is whether the United Kingdom, which is no longer part of Europe, has a national access point?

Tu-Tho: Yes, absolutely. So, the acronym is BODS for Bus Open Data Services. So you can find all the data from the United Kingdom there. Moreover, the United Kingdom remains very strongly involved in the standardisation bodies since the CEN, as I said earlier, is broader than the European Union in the strict sense.

Walid: Shall we find out? Switzerland, Iceland…

Tu-Tho: There will be Switzerland, there will be Norway, Turkey too.

Are there any countries that are more advanced in terms of making data available?

Walid: Earlier, you touched on two words about it. You said that indeed, Norway and the Nordic countries, in general, were quite advanced in terms of opening up data. I wondered if there were precisely countries that were more proactive and that were already ahead of the curve, perhaps because of their history. That others on these subjects around data sharing, availability, etc.

Tu-Tho: So yes, already, France, surprisingly. I know that in France we like to say that we’re not that good, but in fact, we’re pretty good at open data in Europe, and especially when it comes to multimodal data. We have already mentioned them, Norway, the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, etc., to name but a few.

But, as I mentioned earlier, it’s not something I like to do, insofar as I recognize that we didn’t all leave at the same time, we didn’t all start with the same infrastructure. So comparing one country to another is not the most interesting thing. On the other hand, what is very interesting, what has happened in France, and this is what I would like to insist on, is that we have gone much further than what was recommended in the MMTIS delegated regulation, since in the LOM, we asked for more things, so the Mobility Orientation Law in France.

Walid: Wait, we’ll… Let’s say that it is the law on the orientation of mobility that transposes European regulations into French law. Well, or in part, right?

Tu-Tho: Partly. Partly.

In fact, it has relied on European regulations to add obligations to the French ecosystem. And where France has gone much further, for example, has been a pioneer in Europe, it is all about accessibility. And in particular passenger information for people, either with disabilities or simply who travel with constraints. And that’s where it was very interesting, is that what we did in France was used at the European level to also change a certain number of things in the passenger information standard.

Walid: Is that related to the Olympics (Editor’s note: Olympic Games)?

Tu-Tho: So, yes and no.

Walid: It was still a big subject, it was still a big subject, transport and accessibility. So, given the timings and everything, the question arises.

Tu-Tho: Indeed. There were the Olympics in the line of sight, but you have to know that, from an accessibility point of view as well, France has a law that dates back to 2005, whose 20th anniversary we celebrated this year, which is really about inclusion in society, as much as we can, as best we can, And we must always do better, for all people with disabilities. And that’s really what was the driving force. I think that in France, we have this view which is to say that everyone must be able to have the same opportunities.

Adoption by non-EU countries

Walid: I was wondering if this work done at the European level could spread to other continents, like what is happening with the signalling system called ERTMS, which, in the end, is a European system for managing signalling and regulation, and which, in the end, has spread all over the world and has been adopted in other parts of the world. Is all this work being done at the European level, you mentioned Turkey earlier, which was also involved, are there other places in the world where they are inspired by this?

Tu-Tho: Yes. So I think that what has been most inspiring, for all the other continents, has really been the approach of a national access point to transport data, and, in any case, open data. We have seen these data hubs appear in North America, Australia, Japan, to name but a few that I know, with a view in particular in Australia and North America, that has also been focused on the European standards that we use, whether for real-time data or planned data. So, it’s quite interesting to see that everyone was inspired by it and came to build on what we did.

Working in a European multi-cultural environment

Walid: ok. The second part I really wanted us to talk about is really the human part. Now, I don’t know anything about it and I’m really interested in you talking about it, it’s all human work. I wondered what challenge it was and how it was to work. When you’re at the European level, in this multicultural environment and you’re working on things like that, normalization. Explain to us a little bit how it actually works? I’m very curious to understand.

Tu-Tho: The biggest challenge, I think it’s going to be multicultural. And it’s not necessarily only related to differences in nationality, but we all have our own work habits.

So, we all have personalities, ways of seeing the world that can be very different. It’s not the most insurmountable, but sometimes it can create grains of sand in conversations. And you have to take the time to understand where the person comes from, what their point of view is, but also, very important in the standardization of public transport, what transport offers they have next to home. And typically, for example, I live in Paris, so I take the metro and the RER almost all the time. So, for me, these are modes of transport that I know well and I can see the issues that are linked. From a standardization point of view. Some of my colleagues, who live in the Netherlands, for example, only use buses. And in Norway, they also use ferries. And all this brings very different elements, perspectives on our ways of modelling public transport.

Which brings me to the biggest challenge we have, which is consensus. Because any norm and standard must be built on consensus, putting more than 20 experts in the same room, virtual or not, so that they model the transport offer in the same way, when they all have different habits at home, is extremely time-consuming. What is also very long is to build a consensus to ensure that we do not break existing implementations of information systems, national standards, etc. But in the end, I want to say, it’s a bit like trying to organize a barbecue with 27 of your close friends to find a date. I don’t think it’s done in 24 hours.

Walid: I don’t know if the French are very good at consensus compared to other countries, whose way of thinking is more like that. It must not necessarily be obvious to us all the time.

Tu-Tho: It’s true that it can be… It’s good, let’s say that it puts a little salt in the discussions.

Walid: In the end, it’s not just the technique in this. We have to take into account what we have at home and try to understand how we are going to make it all work. And so, indeed, I can imagine that it’s very, very long.

Tu-Tho: Yes, it’s very long, but at the same time, it’s very rewarding. It also allows us to go much further in the modelling, that is to say to propose different things…

Today, we are lucky, so we have European standards that are extremely fine and detailed because we had to get everyone on board with the transport offer that they saw on a daily basis.

And these are always things that are extremely enriching, in any case, that I find fascinating. That’s really what makes me want to continue to be involved in standardization efforts.

The expert community in Europe

Walid: Finally, when you are an expert, do you remain an expert for a long enough period of time? So in fact, in the end, people know each other and you don’t need to spend your time relearning how others work. And I also wonder, by the way, are we talking about a large community in Europe? Is it a small group of people who work on these subjects? Is it a large group?

Tu-Tho: The group at the CEN level is not very large. I think we’re, maybe a maximum of 60 people. And in any case, in the meetings, there will be at best between 15 and 20 people who manage to connect. Because today, we do a lot of things by video. So, we have extremely busy agendas. It’s not easy to always find a date when everyone is available. So, there have always been historical actors. And in any case, it was from them that I learned when I started, who have been doing this for more than 20 years and who have an extremely detailed knowledge, both of the standards and the transport offers that exist in Europe.

But there is always a part of renewal. For example, typically, I arrived in the field less than five years ago. I also have new colleagues who have been working in the field for less than six months. And it is always this influx of new people, new generations that also makes the discussions rich. So, there’s a little bit of both. In the end, we end up getting to know each other and understanding how each other reacts. And there is obviously also the whole learning part, of having to build a consensus with people you don’t know.

Walid: I’m very curious one day to see that. I think it would be very interesting to understand the problems that people have and how they come to a consensus around a common proposal. That’s really a trick…

Tu-Tho: There’s also a lot of asynchronous work on that. And I invite everyone who is interested, including you, to log in to our GitHub workspaces. Because there are a lot of things we do thanks to it. That is to say, people open tickets saying “today, this is my problem, this is what I understood”. This is where I am stuck, or here are my proposals to improve the standard, is it feasible or not? And as in any collaborative work, as in any open source project, in the end, it’s always done like that. It’s someone who comes to lead a new solution, a new suggestion, and we start talking in a very asynchronous way. And it may take a little time until we reach an agreement by consensus. So, the only problem with asynchronous and written is that we don’t always have the context. That’s why we’ve set up meetings that we try to hold about every month, because it’s going much faster. In the end, to discuss freely for 20-25 minutes rather than exchanges on GitHub or in writing or by e-mail that end up getting lost.

Walid: Let’s continue on this subject. Indeed, your expertise in multicultural work, in the end, is also to bring links into all this.

Tu-Tho: Yes, absolutely. Clearly, having spent so much time working abroad with a lot of different cultures, it has taught me several things, including building bridges between cultures, trying to really find the common bridge between the different stakeholders. And it also taught me a lot of patience, so especially not to react in the heat of the moment.

We used to say, the French, we are not always very good at building consensus. And that’s really something I’ve learned from traveling and working abroad. And also to try to decipher the unsaid, because, as all meetings are held in English, it is far from being our mother tongue for everyone in the room. It’s trying to go further than sentences that would be constructed in a way, let’s say, a little rough or to have words that are misused. Really, to look much further, to try to decipher what the person wanted to say in order to build a solution with them.

Walid: In all this work, what was the role of the institutions, again? And then I was wondering if, in all this work around the normative framework and everything, it was more a certain group of people who were driving forces and who take everyone along?

Tu-Tho: yes. So, your intuition is more than good. It’s always a question of the individual. The role of institutions is extremely important because it provides a framework. It also makes it possible to give, in certain countries, including France, funding for experts, to allow us to continue working. It can also be the provision of premises, for example.

All of this is extremely useful, even more so when you have the support of the State or the Regulatory Authority, because we feel, as experts, that our work brings real value and allows us to build the passenger information we share. Then, we’re not going to lie to ourselves, like any standard, like any open project, if there wasn’t a hard core of enthusiasts, we wouldn’t be able to do it, it wouldn’t make progress. We are proud of France that two of the three largest standards cited in the MMTIS regulation were designed in France by French experts. This is a real recognition of our technical ability to model complex subjects. But above all, it is also our ability, in a way, to have led working groups by building consensus. So, we’re not that bad at doing it.

But also to have succeeded in taking an interest in what is being done by some people, by others, to do modelling on a European or even global scale. And then, the most important thing, once again, is really, as you said, to have good relations between the people who are the driving force to be able to rely on each other to move the files forward.

Walid: By the way, I talked about institutions, but I realize that, for example, in the French case, what institutions are we talking about?

Tu-Tho: So, quite simply, today, the DGITM, the General Directorate for Infrastructure, Transport and Mobility, which has had several names in the past. But in France, we are lucky enough to be really supported by the ministry.

Presentation of the association Femmes en Mouvement

Walid: There is a third subject that I would like us to talk about, which has a connection since it is still transport, but not European regulations. This is your involvement in the association Femmes en Mouvement. I would like you to present what you do, what the Women in Movement association is, and what do you do in this association?

Tu-Tho: Yes, so indeed, Women on the Move, a huge link with mobility, as its name suggests. So, it’s an association under the law of 1901 that will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, and which was really born from an observation by the founding team, of which I was not a member. Who realized that from conference to conference on transport, on mobility issues, and even more so on technical subjects, there were very few women.

And so, the association really reacted to this observation by saying: we really need two things in France, to really France — to really promote women who work in the mobility sector and their expertise, but also to push for the consideration of gender issues in mobility and the construction of offers. Because one cannot go without the other, that is, the more women we have working in the sector, the more the solutions developed in our sector will be completely inclusive of the needs of women, families and the greatest possible diversity of all users.

Today, it is an association that has two types of members: individual members, like me, but also companies and organizations that support us. To do this, I invite everyone to go and see the Women on the Move website to find out who our members are. From a purely personal point of view, as a member, I had the immense honour of being elected to the board of directors last September. And also to be part of the association’s office, in which I hold the position of assistant secretary in charge of events.

The problems addressed by the association

Walid: I confirm that to watch many, many, many conferences and stuff around transport, the place of women is really very, very low, and it’s very sad. Well, I was wondering, can you name some specific problems in transport for women or the families you work on? By the way, what do you propose? Can we consider that you are a lobby? What are you working on as a subject?

Tu-Tho: Well, I’m not entirely sure I like the term lobby for something that I think… (laughs)

Walid: Yes. To put it bluntly, not a representation group, after all. In short, lobby is not the right word, that’s it.

Tu-Tho: No, no, absolutely, but let me explain. Because in fact, we really have two types of actions that are completely complementary and specific. And where we are different from a lobby — even if we can use the same tricks — is that we do not come to promote actors from the private sector. What we really want to put forward is a better consideration of the specific issues of gender in the field of transport.

So, this is an extremely broad subject. But we talked earlier about the under-representation of women in conferences, in fact, I think we were two speakers, maybe three, in the DevRoom at FOSDEM. And it’s really something that we find very unfortunate, because there are a lot of experts in our field. They are not necessarily highlighted.

And what we do at Femmes en Mouvement: we quite often organize networking events once a month to highlight women in positions they are not necessarily be expected to be in, so that they can share their experiences with us, but also their thoughts on the positions they may have in responsibility, or their careers, which can be completely different. But also, I would like to say, we come to nudge all the conference organizers in France and those we know, to push them to really achieve parity in round tables, in panels, in speeches. We also come to offer a pool of experts who are the members of our association to intervene on various and varied subjects.

So that’s really our first pillar. And the second pillar I was talking about, which was really taking into account the specificities of women in their travel: there is, for example, the whole issue of safety, or transport options, which has often been designed for an able-bodied man, going from home to a job located in the city centre, without taking into account all the different parts of a woman’s journey.

And for that, we’re working on a project — but I won’t say much more because I’ll have to meet you at the UITP summit, which will take place in Hamburg in June — to discover our new project.

Walid: Can you specify what the UITP is?

Tu-Tho: UITP, the International Union of Public Transport.

Walid: Very interesting. I had the impression that there were more women on things related to research, on transport, that, for example, if you take a conference with industrialists, then it’s a desert.

Tu-Tho: Yes (laughs).

Walid: I had the impression that I had seen more conferences with women researchers than with people who work in the industrial sector.

Tu-Tho: Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. So, afterwards, I think that what must play a role, is that, in the industrial fields, and in particular engineering, even more so in the world of passenger information, standardization or computer solutions in which I am immersed, it is not the most obvious. Because there is a lack of young women entering the field.

It took time and it still takes time to convince young girls and young women to come and enter more technical, more industrial, more scientific careers. So, we’re really trying to support that as well. And quite simply because there is this very masculine view of new technologies, which is still very masculine today. But we’re trying to change that in the world of transport. We are fortunate, in the world of public transport, to be in a field where there are many women. And that’s why we try to put them forward.

Walid: Do you make interventions in schools, precisely to promote all these careers, all these women who have positions of responsibility, for example?

Tu-Tho: So, in schools, no. There are other associations, and in particular Rêv’elles, Elles bougent which have really taken up this issue and which are now going to schools, high schools, preparatory classes to try to promote engineering schools and the careers of women engineers. There is this whole aspect that has already been taken. We’re really a rather professional network, so of women who work in the field, and we always try to push our young talents to go and run for positions, with responsibility.

Final Words

Walid: Super interesting. To be continued to see your secret project in the coming months. We are coming to the end of our interview and by way of conclusion, I wanted to first of all, before giving you the floor for a final word, I wanted to ask you two questions. The first thing is: what would you say to someone who is interested in open data and standards, to be interested in these topics around what we just discussed, standardization?

Tu-Tho: First of all, I would say welcome to them. We have to ask the questions. It’s a bit long to ingest existing material, but you shouldn’t be afraid of it. You really have to tell yourself that all the other experts are there to answer my questions. Any goodwill is more than welcome. And the most important thing is that you shouldn’t have the impression that you have to know everything, master everything before contributing, because any question is good for moving forward. I think that, after a certain number of years of working in the field, we can have a bias of expertise where we no longer see the simplest questions.

Walid: And what would you say to open source developers who would be interested in topics around transport?

Tu-Tho: Quite simply, they’re more than welcome… Especially if they are looking for one of the best ways to haven a impact. At the beginning of the episode, there was a lot of talk about this awareness that mobility is one of our first fundamental rights. So, if we really want to work today to build a society that is better, that is more inclusive and that allows us to move freely, we need a lot more software developers in the world of transportation.

Walid: So, you have to come to the FOSDEM room.
Tu-Tho: Exactly, and we need a much bigger room next year (laughs).
Walid: First of all, how does it feel? 3 years now? Already in the first year, the room was already completely full, proof that the subject is fascinating. yes, that’s it. It’s super interesting, the conferences are really very, very interesting. I’ll leave you the last word: do you want to pass on a message to the listeners of Projets Libres! before we part?

Tu-Tho: As always, the MMTIS Open Data Team for women remains there, it remains strong and it is only waiting for all the talents of the listeners, but also of the listeners. Afterwards, more seriously, I hope that after listening to this episode, there will be many requests from developers to learn more about the free solutions that exist around multimodal transport data, its ecosystem and also standardization. Because in fact, I would like us to be able to put forward the perfect person to explain to us how code can simplify standardization, because I understand, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

Walid: Listen, Tu-Tho, thank you very much. I found it really very interesting. For the listeners, as usual, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate, or remarks, or reactions, share with those around you. Have a lot of people listen to it. And if you are a woman and you want to work on these subjects, you can very well go and see the association Femmes en Mouvement, which is waiting for you too. See you soon, have a good evening, and be well. Thank you very much Tu-Tho, see you next time.

Tu-Tho: Thank you!

Episode production

• Remote recording on April 23, 2025
• Basis: Walid Nouh & Tu-Tho Thai
• Editing: Walid Nouh
• Transcript: Walid Nouh & Tu-Tho Tai

This article has been automatically translated from the original language into English.

To go further

Projets Libres! recommendations :

• SNCF Connect limits to 3 segments / 2 corresponding segments (in french)
• FOSDEM 2024 Conference: Open standards, open data, open-source tools: their governance and future

Tu-Tho’s recommendations:

• GitHub repository of NeTEx (European standard for static information)
• SIRI (European Standard for Dynamic Information) GitHub Directory:
• The Transmodel website, a European standard that serves as the basis for data exchange formats (including NeTEx and SIRI) as a data model

License

This podcast is released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license or later