Web conference notes, 2021.03.25 (Joint Working Group)
Joint Working Group - Provider Services
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- Steve Brining, BlueSystems
- Michael Schnuerle, OMF
- William Henderson, Ride Report
- Matt Davis, Populus
- 21 Attendees
Main Topics
- Status of MDS 1.1.0 Release - in Board Approval - Michael
- MDS GitHub homepage information relocation and simplification update - Michael
- 552 third parties
- Discussion of any unresolved issues that are a priority
- Provider Operating date-ranges: https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-specification/issues/628
Notes and or transcript of the call with presentation, document, GitHub links and calls to action.
Moving Info off MDS Main Page
- For 1.1 we will be moving a lot of information off the MDS main page to the OMF website
- Includes the cities using MDS and providers areas, and adds a third party software area. The headers and description will remain in the repo, but the link will go to the website
- Not mentioned on the call, but the Use Case link will go to the website instead of wiki page since it has more context and framing, and the Related Projects area will link to the existing Community Projects page on the website, and the Privacy Committee's State of Practice doc, since the info on the MDS page is duplicative of these areas and can be more frequently updated.
- This will help people better read and discover the information, allow better search engine results, allow better formatting and visuals/logos to be added to the data, allow us to update the information more frequently and outside of releases, creates a place to list third party companies for the first time, and provides the only place on the internet where someone is curating this information.
- For now the formatting of these pages will be similar to what's on the GitHub site, but it will improve over time and could include tables, images, logos, etc.
- The OMF State of MDS Survey can also inform some changes and additions to this (survey closed yesterday, but let OMF Staff know if you still want to participate).
Issue 628 Operating Date Ranges
- Utility - it did seem useful to everyone to know in the feed when operations started or when there are current, past, or future gaps in operation. For cities, explaining gaps in data is useful. For cities and third parties, knowing the start data of operations is good to reduce trial and error discovery and over-querying the data. For providers it could reduce the amount questions they get asking where the data is or saying the feed is broken.
- GBFS offers some of this already with system_information (start date) and system_calendar and system_hours. It seems better if cities/third parties could use this existing data feed than ask providers to duplicate the info or create a similar feed in MDS.
- The system_calendar however does not yet support multiple date ranges and other flexibility. There is a new proposal 289 opened last month with an accompanying document that would expand this. But it's not clear to me if this proposal meets the needs here since it seems to talk about hours for stations (not the whole operator system) and removed the system_hours. Maybe @mplsmitch could let us know more.
- Another useful suggestion was to add some info at the head of an existing endpoint like /trips that has 1) a text and a link to the correct GBFS feed with more information and 2) possibly the start date of operations.
- The start date could alternatively be included in the proposed Requirements API, at an operator level for the city, or even more granular per operator, per MDS version, and per API endpoint if that is important.
