Concerning that most of the carbon emissions of transport and most of the energy consumption caused by road transport, Helsinki Region Transport (HSL) considered that the reduction of car driving and the increase of use of public transport, walking, cycling and car sharing are urgent needs. In this direction, HSL has planned the development of the Helsinki Region Transport System Plan (HLJ).

   HSL is a joint local authority, consists of seven member municipalities – Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen, Kerava, Kirkkonummi and Sipoo – which started its operations in 2010. HSL made the use of public transport attractive to commuters, as 345 million journeys are accomplished according to its services.

   The organisation of public transport and the improvement of its operation conditions, the development of travel fare and ticketing system, the provision of transport and passenger information and the organisation of tickets sales and tickets inspections are the main operations of HLJ. Despite all these useful operations, HSL’s most remarkable achievement is its “open” policy in data and applications (APIs), and its new open journey planner feature.

    Regarding open data and APIs, everyone is able to have free access in HSL’s transport data interfaces for applications and services, which support public transport usage and transport information, by creating a free HSL account. The open APIs are HSL Journey Planner API, HSL live API, Kalkati.net XML database dump and GTFS database dump. Additionally, the distribution and the re – use of open data is allowed. Furthermore, as the commuters’ needs are getting more exigent, HSL has invested on IBM’s Message Sight product in order to provide real time traffic data.

   Moreover and regarding the new open journey planner (JP), it is a mobile application that is planned to be released on March 1st, 2016. It will provide guidance during the journey and its operations will be based on real time traffic data. The use of real time traffic data could affect the routing results according to the current traffic situation in order to provide the best transport solution. The development of the open JP is being accomplished with the contribution of the Finnish Transport Agency and its coverage range will be national.

   As well as HSL’s services, GYM’s platform and its services will be accessible free to everyone and the data will be also open. This important feature will contribute to the cooperation with other JP providers across EU and will lead to the Pan – European character of GYM platform.

The LIFE GYM [LIFE14 ENV/GR/000611] project is co-funded by the LIFE programme, the EU financial instrument for the environment.

The sole responsibility for the content of this report lies with the authors. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union. Neither the EASME nor the European Commission are responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Start Date: 15 September 2015 – Duration: 35 months