The days are getting shorter, we start decorating our homes, and in some places, snow has already blanketed the landscape. As the year draws to a close, the TOMP Working Group is not about to let you head off for the Christmas holidays without some engaging reading material.
For our final interview of the year, we had the pleasure of speaking with none other than Paul Theyskens, Digital Program Manager and Consultant at the MaaS Alliance. In case you are not familiar yet with the MaaS Alliance: it is an organization dedicated to fostering an open and unified market for Mobility-as-a-Service. Their goal is to fully deploy MaaS services through collaborative work programs, engaging transport operators, service providers, public authorities, and users. Paul plays a key role in advancing this mission every day. We are especially grateful that he found a gap in his busy schedule to discuss the TOMP-API, its potential for future development, and the evolving landscape of MaaS.
Thank you very much for taking part in this interview, Paul. You are one of the most familiar faces in the TOMP Working Group, taking part in the discussions since the early days of TOMP. How did you discover our Working Group?
When I was working for the Flemish public transport operator De Lijn in 2018 and later at the Department of Mobility & Public Works of the Flemish Government, I learned about the seven MaaS pilots in The Netherlands and about the TOMP-API. I decided to join the Working Group because I am a believer in open source and the need for loosely coupled web services and the API economy as important enablers of the Open MaaS Ecosystem that is needed to reach the EU’s twin transition goals.
You are involved in different MaaS and digital transformation projects. For which projects did you recommend implementing the TOMP-API?
In the Flemish MaaS project on Basic Accessibility (basisbereikbaarheid) and for the Mobility Centre (Hoppincentrale) – now Hoppin.be – I have recommended implementing the TOMP-API to both Transport Operators and MaaS Providers. I did so by writing a technical requirement into the tender that service providers needed to implement the TOMP-API if they wanted to offer transport services or MaaS operator services. Yet, these organisations have not adopted the data standard, mainly because of risk concerns regarding the impact on their IT legacy and the risk of losing control of their IT roadmap and governance by implementing the TOMP-API. Luckily, there are opportunities in the future when the project moves from the pilot phases to fully operational mode. Moreover, EU-policy on MMTIS, MDMS, Napcore and data sharing activities in the eMDS European Mobility Data Spaces and EDIC can also play a role.
Based on your knowledge of the market, what functionalities should, according to you, be included in the next iteration of TOMP?
I do not have experience in actual implementations, but I studied the ongoing implementations in The Netherlands, Switzerland and other countries, and I have experience with API platform implementations at De Lijn, in media and in telco industries. Based on this experience, I can give some suggestions for next steps, especially regarding the business and technology side.
On the business side, I would create a better website for the TOMP Working Group and the audience that we want to reach. This should improve the discoverability of the TOMP-API, ensure that there are clear, step-by-step guides, example use cases, and tutorials that demonstrate the TOMP-API’s benefits for service providers. I would also encourage participating in academic projects that integrate the TOMP-API, thus increasing awareness among tech-savvy student communities. I also believe it makes sense to create a formal certification process for MaaS providers who implement the API correctly, offering a badge they can display to demonstrate compliance. Finally, I would recommend seeking funding to support smaller MaaS companies with limited resources to implement the TOMP-API, thus encouraging widespread adoption.
On the technical side, I believe it makes sense to offer a testing environment where developers can experiment with the API without the need for a full deployment.
In the next iterations of the TOMP-API, I believe we should consider integrating with a number of EU-initiatives in data sharing and identity, like:
- integration of the standard with CEN Transmodel;
- integration with the French Mobility Account standard and the eIDAS EU Identity Wallets that will be rolled out;
- integration of TOMP-API in the eMDS – European Mobility Data Space – deployment pilots where relevant;
- integration of TOMP API in the forthcoming EDIC cross border mobility pilot projects, like the Go Scheldemond (Flanders-Zeeland) or the Benelux Living Lab;
- integration of Trusted Data Intermediaries for personal data;
- and investigate integration of Account Based Ticketing and the unified payment interface.
I would encourage participating in academic projects that integrate the TOMP-API, thus increasing awareness amoung tech-savvy student communities.
As you highlighted, you can draw on a wide experience, working for many top-notch organisations in Flanders and abroad, such as De Lijn or IMEC. Based on your overview of the field, which future do you see for Mobility-as-a-Service and which role can TOMP play in this evolution?
I believe that TOMP can support the future evolution of MaaS and Digital Transformation maturity by setting the standards for integrating intermodal Demand-Responsive Transport, Account-Based Ticketing systems, personal data, and AI. This combination would foster an open ecosystem where users have seamless, on-demand mobility choices aligned with their privacy, accessibility, and sustainability needs.
Let me elaborate further on this in a bit more detail.
Demand-Responsive Transport – In the shift towards digital and sustainable transport, we need to solve the supply-side fragmentation. Multimodal DRT has a lot of potential as it allows real-time, flexible routing and scheduling to adapt to user demand, instead of relying on supply-based fixed schedules. In the shift toward reducing congestion and pollution, DRT has the potential to enable efficient transport services tailored to specific citizen needs, dynamically optimised for peak and off-peak times. This shift will benefit from TOMP’s role in defining standards that can unify disparate services into a single platform. By building open source public algorithms and providing the protocol framework, TOMP has the potential to streamline DRT implementations, making inter-provider communication seamless and enabling shared mobility providers to quickly integrate and scale intermodal MaaS DRT services across different regions.
I believe that TOMP can support the future of MaaS and Digital Transformation maturity by setting the standards for integrating intermodal Demand-Reponsive Transport, Account-Based Ticketing systems, personal data and AI.
EU ID + Account-Based Mobility – With account-based systems, citizens can have personalised access to multiple modes of transport via a single digital identity that enable proactive journey planning, adapting routes and modes of transport based on user preferences, habits, and real-time conditions. By supporting interoperability standards, the TOMP Working Group can help ensure that Account-Based Ticketing has standardised access to Transport Operator and MaaS Provider data, enabling personalised, real-time transport optimization. For example, TOMP could support data structures allowing user-specific fare aggregation, loyalty rewards, and shared vehicle availability within account-based systems.
Generic Orchestration for the Open Mobility ecosystem – Finally, by establishing data sharing standards, the TOMP Working Group can facilitate data sharing for societal purposes and empower both citizens and authorities. Trusted intermediaries for personal data and AI sandboxing are examples of general Mobility-as-a-Service orchestration services that can be developed to ensure sovereign control over travel history data. This approach allows for the sharing of only the information necessary for a specific service, while also leveraging data to provide incentives, discounts, or recommendations that are tailored to the mobility needs of citizens and authorities.
Together, these three layers would foster an open mobility ecosystem where users have seamless, on-demand mobility choices aligned with their privacy, accessibility, and sustainability needs.
Next to your role in the TOMP Working Group, you are also involved in the EDIC (European Digital Infrastructure Consortium) ‘Mobility and Logistics’. Can you tell us more about this initiative? How can MaaS and TOMP contribute to this EDIC?
The MaaS Alliance is a participant in the EDIC ‘Mobility and Logistics’ that is now being formed as one of the EDIC’s of the EU Digital Agenda, next to the Digital Twin EDIC and other relevant initiatives. This initiative is building on the eMDS European Mobility Data Space and other EU initiatives to enable member state cross border Data Utility Services for Mobility and Logistics.
It is expected that this EDIC Public-Private Partnership will start in 2025, and already two pilot projects for mobility and logistics use cases will be tendered somewhere towards the end of 2025. In this EDIC, a number of MaaS use cases have been formulated.
To wrap-up this interview, Paul, we would like to know what you wish for your industry, and how TOMP can contribute to this objective?
Mobility is important in people’s lives because it impacts how we go to work, drop our children off at school, go shopping,… I therefore believe that if we want to realise the full potential of MaaS with the TOMP Working Group, we need to help our industry with increasing its digital transformation maturity and facilitating the climate transition towards sustainable mobility.
Unlimited resources would allow us to build a generic open source MaaS platform that could work across cities, regions, and countries, consequently facilitating effortless travel globally. MaaS could dramatically reduce environmental impact by optimising usage of low-emission and shared transport options, contributing directly to climate goals. TOMP can encourage this by defining standards for sustainability metrics, allowing cities and operators to track and minimise the carbon footprint of transportation services.
Next to the generic MaaS platform that would eliminate the current silo’s of fragmented IT solutions that are being built, it would also enable continuous improvement processes that are needed for realising the changes we need.
In short, I am convinced that the TOMP-API is important in building an open, standardised, and interoperable ecosystem that transcends local and national boundaries, facilitating a seamless, accessible, and environmentally conscious MaaS experience for all.
Thank you very much Paul for this inspiring interview. We wish you all the best in your ongoing and future projects!
Ghent / Brussels (BE), December 2024
This interview was made possible with the support of the Interreg North Sea Region Programme and the Province of Oost-Vlaanderen (Belgium) as part of the Interreg ShareDiMobiHub project.
