NTM, the National Mobility Data Access Point, is supporting technical MaaS standards in the Netherlands since 1 January 2023. This means for the TOMP-WG that NTM takes over the supporting role from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management.
The aim is to help the community (partnership) of municipalities, MaaS service providers, and transport operators to further develop the standards they are already using. This makes data exchange easier and ensures that travellers can make their journey from A to B more sustainable, faster or cheaper. To make the Netherlands, and by extension the whole of (at least) Europe, accessible and liveable. Today and in the future.
They believe for MaaS, mobility data is an important tool to succeed. If we want travellers to be able to book and pay for their journey in one place, the data of all carriers must be known, available, usable and reliable. Interoperability plays an important role here. By NTMs community support for the three MaaS standards: TOMP-API, CDS-M, and Open Wheels, they hope to contribute to full interoperability.
In addition, NTM will support the Strategic Committee and (temporarily) chairs the newly created Change Advisory Board (CAB). This board reviews proposed changes and extensions within the standards and assesses the impact for governments and carriers.
“MaaS gives travellers more freedom of choice. In the MaaS pilots, we learned that in order to scale up MaaS, it is important that more public transport parties, part-mobility providers and other carriers are made accessible via MaaS apps. The use of standards ensures that parties can collaborate more easily and efficiently.” Bon Bakermans, Maas policy advisor at Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management
The TOMP-API in Europe
For the TOMP working group, the scope is apparent. We aim to be the European specification for the technical communication between Transport Operators and MaaS Providers. The TOMP-API is, and will not be, limited to the Netherlands. Therefore, we are currently studying options for a European governance model to anchor our ambitions on a European level.