Back in March I posted this blog about Nitrous and their accelerator programme, which was focusing on some key transport challenges, and asking for applications to the programme. This short video looks at some of the participants in the accelerator programme, filmed at the event at City Hall on Thursday 22 June, as guests were treated to an evening of presentations and networking.
Tag: TfL
New open data: Busiest times at Blackwall Tunnel
The Blackwall Tunnel (A102) is one of the busiest places on London’s road network. In recent years, journey times have increased and drivers can expect delays to their journey at some times of day. We’ve released this data to the open data community, to enable developers to build the information into their products.
Our data shows the busiest times at Blackwall Tunnel so developers can include this information in journey-planning apps
What our data shows
*Follow this link to find the data.
1) The busiest time in the northbound tunnel on a weekday is from 07:00 – 07:30. In heavy traffic conditions, drivers’ journeys could be 15 minutes quicker if they travelled between 06.30-07.00 instead of 07:00 – 07:30.
2) The busiest time in the northbound tunnel on a weekend is from 13.30 – 15.00. In heavy traffic conditions, drivers’ journeys could be 15 minutes quicker if they travelled between 12.00-13.00 instead of 13.30- 15.00.
We have made this data available to the open data community so you can use it to create products which display the busiest times at the tunnel, allowing drivers to choose to travel outside of these periods or create products for planning quicker and more reliable journeys.
Tell us what you think
We encourage the community to provide feedback on our new data sets to help us continue to enhance and improve our open data products. Please let us know your thoughts in the comments section below or on our tech forum.
The making of the TfL TravelBot
We recently launched our first ever Chatbot – the “TfL TravelBot” on Facebook, which uses artificial intelligence to help answer customer queries expressed in everyday language. The bot was launched just two weeks ago and we have already received lots of great feedback. We wanted to offer you more insight into the thinking behind the TravelBot, and shed some light on how we developed it.
The TfL TravelBot launched earlier this month – let us know what you think of it in the comments section below.
Why the TfL TravelBot?
Millions of people already use our website to help them get around London, and we’re constantly seeking new channels to make the process even easier. Research indicates that more than half of the world’s population is now online, and more than 50% of those online are active social media users*. Facebook is comfortably the biggest social media platform, and hence we wanted to take the opportunity to provide them with information via their channel of choice.
Why now?
Instant messaging has emerged as the primary platform for communication these days**. With the advent of digital solutions making it easier to provide conversational platform, we felt it was the right time for us to enter the world of bots. We pride ourselves on being early adopters of technology, and wanted to leverage the potential of existing solutions to come up with a product which is one of the first of its kind in the world of travel.
How was it made?
We designed the logic behind the chatbot and it is hosted in the cloud. Every customer message passes through our logic, and the bot then seeks to deliver the best response. We use artificial intelligence enabled by the machine-learning framework to process the customer messages (Natural Language Processing). It works by understanding intent rather than phrases. Once the message is processed, the bot replies with either a response from our unified API or a friendly retort. The bot is intelligent and has the potential to learn over time.
How does it help?
Apart from being the channel of choice for receiving information, our bot will help the customers in many ways. It will help our customers get the information in the quickest possible time with a 100% response rate. For instance, queries like ‘When is my next bus due?’ can be easily automated, saving customers time and meaning they don’t need to wait for a customer services agent to get a response. In the case of more complex queries, the chatbot can prompt you to speak with an agent.
As a business, this frees up the time of our customer service agents and helps them focus on more complex customer queries. We are also be able to handle many more queries in the same time, therefore improving our response rate.
What next?
We’re constantly looking for feedback to improve our products. If you haven’t it tried yet, search for ‘TfL TravelBot’ on the Facebook Messenger app or go to http://m.me/tfltravelbot on your desktop/laptop. More details on how to use the bot can be found in our previous blog.
Please keep your feedback coming in the comments section below. We know there are more things you would like us to include, and we’re really keen to hear from you.
References
* https://wearesocial.com/uk/special-reports/digital-in-2017-global-overview
** http://www.businessinsider.com/the-messaging-app-report-2015-11?IR=T
Ticketmaster and TfL Hack Day
It was great to be part of London Tech Week through the excellent Hack Day on Friday June 16, put together by the teams at Ticketmaster and Transport for London. With over 600 apps powered by our data in the market place, I always look forward to these events as it allows me to raise awareness of TfL’s open data approach providing the opportunity for organisations and individuals to develop their own creative solutions.
This has helped to form new businesses, create jobs and launch new customer-facing travel products, giving customers more choice on their devices. A great part of this process is that this type of event is open to everyone at no cost, so we saw students, corporate professionals, freelancers, academics and participants from other sectors.
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June 16: TfL and Ticketmaster London Hack Day
As part of London Tech Week, TfL are teaming up with the market-leading ticketing company in the UK, Ticketmaster, to host a hackathon at their London HQ. Bring your ideas to life at the London Hack Day, hosted by TfL and Ticketmaster on Friday June 16.
Join us at our hack day in association with Ticketmaster on June 16, part of London Tech Week
Your App – Use of TfL Design and Logos
It’s great to see that there are now over 600 apps using TfL’s datasets to develop customer facing products, and these products have a huge role to play in helping people to move around the capital. The Digital Partnerships team at TfL continues to engage with developers through this blog, the recently launched Tech Forum, as well supporting the introduction of new data with recent examples including Cycle Superhighways, Cycle Quietways and busiest times at stations. We are also looking at ways to improve our data based on your feedback.
If your app is using TfL’s registered trademarks or intellectual property, you should amend your design
Data Themes #1: Cycling in the City
We recently made available the route data for all our current Cycle Superhighways and the new Quietway 1 so developers can accurately map the existing cycle network in their apps, making it easier for cyclists to find and use these routes. The data will be regularly updated as more Cycle Superhighways and Quietways are completed in the coming years.
The promotion of these cycling routes is part of the delivery of the Mayor’s new blueprint for a healthy London, which will see increasing physical activity put at the centre of a wide range of GLA and TfL policy, setting out how it could transform the lives of millions of Londoners. The new route data complements the extensive data we already provide on cycling in our API and as downloadable files. Here’s an overview of what’s available.
A Santander Cycles docking station: The promotion of cycling routes is part of the delivery of the Mayor’s new blueprint for a healthy London.
Devs – Can You Help Us Provide Better Accessibility Info?
London has one of the most accessible transport networks in the world, but whilst we have made progress on accessibility, we recognise there is an enormous amount of work still to do.
It’s important that wheelchair users know if a station is step-free, and if it is, whether the lifts are working that day.
Celebrating International Women’s Day with Women in Tech
A quick look around any room of developers will suggest that women in tech are woefully underrepresented. In fact, this 50-odd percent of the population only take up around 16 percent of tech jobs, seemingly for historical, cultural and practical reasons.
That situation is reflected at TfL, although we have some strong initiatives that are designed to reduce this effect. Another way of balancing the imbalance is by strengthening the community we already have, so I was delighted to take small part in an afternoon as part of a week of activities, talks and events for International Women’s Day, which was organised by TfL’s internal Women’s Network and Siemens.
Charul Gupta, TfL Online’s Digital Product Manager, discusses the importance of gender diversity at the Women in Tech event.
Change to Absolute URLs in API Responses
On Monday 13th February, we will make a minor change to our Unified API responses so that they will no longer return absolute URLs as references to other API entities. They will now return a relative URL instead.
We don’t anticipate many developers are relying on these URLs being absolute, but if we’re wrong, please let us know as soon as possible in the comments section below or through the API portal.
Next Monday we’re making a minor change to our Unified API responses, so that they will no longer return absolute URLs as references to other API entities
