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How Open APIs Support the Future of Mobility

Industry conferences always give rise to thought-provoking conversations, and APTA’s recent Future of Mobility summit was no exception. Transit leaders, industry advocates, and technology suppliers openly discussed some of today’s biggest challenges in public transportation – and the long-term benefits to be derived from addressing these issues now.

Data integration was raised as a key issue. It is clear that many transit agencies are being challenged to retain and grow their customer base, and one of the key ways they can increase demand and improve their service offering is with an in-depth, data-driven understanding of their operations and of ridership.  Yet, with multiple vendors supplying agencies with different, closed-loop, and often stand-alone technology systems, transit agencies may only be able to examine pieces of their network in isolation, unable to integrate data across multiple transportation modes. While long contract terms benefit agencies by spreading technology capital costs across a longer timeline, they have also tended to lock agencies into proprietary software and hardware combinations that don’t provide essential data visibility.

To ensure that the client agencies we work with are positioned for the future, we built our ATLAS® fare collection platform with open APIs to support interoperability. We have proven our ability to work with many third party vendors so that transit agencies unlock data silos and get richer reporting and data analytics capabilities.

The theme of APTA’s Future of Mobility summit was “From Transit Authority to Mobility Integrator,” and this is a great way of summarizing the changing roles and goals of today’s transportation authorities. Many are now looking at the realities of moving toward a multi-modal, multi-jurisdiction payment platform. To “unlock the promise of integrated mobility,” agencies need to make a series of choices that will support their goals.  As a global leader in transportation payments, systems and services, Conduent is committed to advance these important industry initiatives.

Want to know more about our approach to interoperability and our ATLAS® solution? Read about our successful implementation in Adelaide, Australia.  

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