Boris says bye-bye to indie Boris Bikes developers
9 May 2011: Some of my assumptions in this post are wrong so please read it in the context of Emer Coleman’s comment below.
Courted, used and discarded in less than a year. That’s Boris’s and Transport for London’s attitude towards independent app developers for the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme.
Let’s take it from the beginning.
A month before TfL launched their new cycle hire scheme, Boris was very keen to get independent developers on board. Why? Some deep commitment to digital diversity or small government doing what it does best and leaving the rest to the market?
Not really. Just that in 2010 if you’re launching a public cycle hire scheme in a major world city you need an app. And there wasn’t any budget allocated for one so the open data line was expedient.
Let’s hear some of the bull from back in June 2010:
In build up to the launch of the Mayor’s Barclays Cycle Hire scheme on 30 July, Transport for London (TfL) has relaxed its terms and conditions to allow commercial use of official data – opening the door for developers to provide accurate and reliable information about the hundreds of locations where hire cycles will be available, smart routes around town or proximity of docking stations to Tube stations and places of interest.
Of course this wasn’t actually true anyway. TfL didn’t release any live machine-readable data about bike or dock availability at that point. In fact, they still haven’t.
More bull from TfL:
Independently produced apps will complement the wealth of information that TfL is already generating to keep users up to speed about the scheme.
So what happened? Indie developers got on board only to find that they had to screen scrape data from TfL’s web map, the only publicly-available source of data. No real API, no service level standards, no support. And very often crap data.
The incident where TfL’s map started serving up data from the Montreal cycle hire scheme being just one case in point.
The indies have muddled through, producing some good apps that very often have been held back by poor and unreliable data. When it comes to realtime information services, your app is only as good as your data.
People have invested time and money in these apps, largely in the hope that TfL would see them right soon enough.
All the while, developers have been pressing TfL for a real API. The story has always been that it’s coming… one day.
I think it’s reasonable to say that indie developers have made a big contribution towards Barclays Cycle Hire’s success. There aren’t unlimited bikes and you need to be able to find them. It’s handy to have a timer to help manage the costs. And you need a map on the go just to find the docking stations. You need an app.
TfL have been happy to take the credit for the indie cycle hire app and analysis work that they’ve done next to nothing to support.
And now we get the final confirmation of where TfL really stands on indie developers and open data: This week Barclays launched official iPhone and Android apps for the scheme.
These free apps (with all of Barclays/TfL’s marketing support behind them) wipe out the largest markets for indie apps at a stroke.
Moreover, Barclays own apps will doubtless be using a private API to which they have privileged access. So their apps get good quality data while everyone else struggles along with the leftovers.
I’m told, unofficially, that an official cycle hire API is coming soon. But I’ve heard that story before.
When it comes — if it comes — it’ll be useful for the people doing data analysis and building cycle hire data into novel apps and games like Chromaroma.
But for the mass market — indie developers making and selling standard find a bike/dock apps — TfL just doesn’t need you any more.
The parallels with Twitter’s attitude to its API are clear: Having built a successful service on the back of indie developers’ labour, it’s now time to take the good stuff in house and reap the rewards. At least Twitter provided a proper API.
The question remains: Who’s driving Barclays Cycle Hire, Barclays or the mayor?
Perhaps the clue’s in the name.
I find it strange that this has been developed when there are many bery good feee apps out there. Personally I’ll stick with the one I’m using
You have my full respect for your hard work Adrian.
TfL #Openwashing
Open data is for society not just for PR campaigns.
Pretty rotten behaviour. :(
To be fair, TfL’s June 2010 press release doesn’t say anything about providing a feed about the empty/full status of the docks, just their locations and names – and they did indeed provide such a feed on the developer area. Whether it’s up to date or not is a different matter.
Also are you sure it’s TfL that have produced this app and not a Barclays tech team?
Sorry – to rewrite my last point – are you sure Barclays have produced this app with privileged support/data access from TfL?
Ollie,
This is a Barclays app not a TfL one. Obviously I’ve made some assumptions here (good ones, I think) that might turn out to be wrong.
But none of the scenarios I can imagine are good.
Barclays/TfL coordination
Are Barclays developing this with TfL’s cooperation or not? I suspect they’re working together.
So:
- If TfL and Barclays are working together on this then they appear to be undermining the mayor’s broader open data aspirations
- If Barclays are doing this on their own initiative and TfL don’t even know about it then that’s a point of concern too. It still undermines the open data/developer engagement situation and indicates that TfL don’t have an effective working relationship with their major sponsor.
Private API?
Again, I assume that Barclays will be working from a privileged, private API in coordination with TfL.
If they are, then that’s a completely unfair market advantage.
If they’re not, then surely it’s a matter of concern that the de facto official app for the scheme is having to rely on unreliable scraping.
So whichever of these situations turns out to be true, the mayor and TfL need to get their story straight about what they’re trying to achieve with open data and how they’re going to work with developers to make that happen. Whether it’s been agreed or not, I don’t see how Barclays aren’t going to want to promote their app through the main cycle hire site and elsewhere in TfL’s marketing.
And dare I say it, the realtime public API is long overdue.
Adrian
Apologies for time it took to get clarification. I would be grateful if you could set the record straight and I will answer your assertions one by one.
The application has been developed by Barclays and not by TfL. TfLs Digital Strategy is explicit that it does not see its role as producing apps and that this is the domain of the market.
Barclays and Tfl are not working together on this.
Tfl were aware that Barclays were developing their own application however they are doing this on the same basis as everyone else and TfL have asked them not to describe the application as an “official app”.
You are incorrect also to suggest that Barclays have some sort of privileged access. Barclays are obtaining the data on the same basis as everyone else i.e. scraping from the TfL website.
Tfl are aware that the lack of a live feed is a matter of concern to all developers. This is the subject of ongoing discussions between TfL and their partners in the cycle hire scheme Serco. They hope to make the real time data available soon.
TfL will not be marketing the Barclays app through TfL, on the main cycle hire site or anywhere else in TfL’s marketing.
Again apologies for the delay in responding but just wanted to make sure everything totally clear and accurate before posting. Would appreciate if you could clarify to your readers.
Speak soon
Emer
The Barclays app talks to a private API to obtain its data, rather than scraping the web site directly. This is expected for this sort of thing, as you can optimise the data for the format your application requires to reduce load times. This API most likely obtains the data by scraping the TFL website. It should be noted that this API isn’t run by either Barclays or TFL, but a third party who are most likely the company that built the mobile applications.
However this isn’t the end of the story… it really should be noted that this isn’t the only ‘official’ app. Spotcycle is run by 8D Technologies, the company that provides the *actual* infrastructure and docking station hardware.
I have compared the feeds that both these apps use, and developers will be relieved to know that their data is not any more up to date than the feed provided by scraping the TFL website. So it seems unlikely that they have been provided with any sort of secret API which gives them privileged access. Given that one of the apps is run by the people who built the hardware, and even they cannot get any better data, I would suggest that not being able to access real live data is infact a design flaw in the system. The docks probably only ‘phone home’ a few times per hour, and seeing how it takes forever to undock a bike during peak usage, it could be even less often then. As Adrian suggested (on Twitter), access to the live data was probably an afterthought, and somebody thought it would be cool to show map, which in turn got scraped…
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