2026-08-29 –, Guadeloupe Language: English
There are several FOSS solutions for routing on OSM road data at planet scale, but until recently we lacked an intermodal router at a similar scale which also takes public transport and rental vehicles into account. Transitous is a community-run public transport routing service built entirely with Free Software and Open Data to fill this gap. Started in 2024 it meanwhile covers more 300,000 concurrent trips in over 60 countries.
In this talk we'll look at where Transitous came from, how it's built and what features it offers for use in FOSS applications. We will also cover what data it consumes. OSM is a crucial part of this of course, among other things for the first and last mile of a trip, as well as for transfers between public transport services. Reliably matching realtime information for e.g. elevators to OSM objects or routing inside buildings are particular challenges here.
Volker is contributing to Free Software as a member of the KDE community since more than two decades. As part of his work on KDE's travel application Itinerary he has implemented OSM indoor rendering and routing components and got involved in the Open Transport community, as a founding member of Transitous and co-organizer of the Open Transport Community Conference.