The Sense and Nonsense of RTTI

What is RTTI and why is it important?

In the world of digital traffic management, the term RTTI is often mentioned. RTTI stands for Real Time Traffic Information and is an EU regulation that was republished in February 2022. This regulation concerns making various traffic data available to better inform road users about the current road conditions. It applies to all public roads where data is known and that must be made accessible by January 1, 2028. The main road network must be digitally accessible by January 1, 2025, with the data being available via a National Access Point (NAP). Only machine-readable data must be made available via the NAP. This means that the data must be in a format that can be automatically read by systems, without human intervention. Non-machine-readable data does not need to be shared. In the Netherlands, the National Access Point Mobility Data (NTM) is the NAP where data is made available.

What data needs to be available?

There are people who expect the world of digital traffic management to look quite different by January 1, 2025. However, if you take a closer look at the regulation, it seems that this change may not be as dramatic as expected. A study was conducted on behalf of the Ministry, and CROW also published a guide. It focuses on the data items in the Netherlands that meet the requirements of RTTI, and eight data types have been defined. These mainly concern speed limits, traffic signs (both static and dynamic traffic regulations), and (planned) roadworks. These three data items are now also being highlighted nationally as the key items that need to be “in order” by January 1, 2025. It should be noted that the existing data is already machine-readable, so it’s mostly about ensuring the data is accessible. There is also a focus on whether a feedback loop can be set up in collaboration with service providers, which is also one of the requirements within RTTI.

The role of service providers and data quality

RTTI also includes the requirement that service providers must make the data accessed through the NAP available to their users. However, the data must be usable and of good quality. And this is where things often go wrong at the moment, because despite all the national efforts to create a good set of data, the data providers are not all there yet. These are the local road authorities, who often lack the time and priority to keep the data properly up to date. The quality of this data is improving, but it is still (far) from a level where service providers are eager to adopt it. And this is the problem, because road authorities are increasingly assuming that service providers will use all the data they provide. In some ways, this is logical because why else would they submit the data?

Wegstatus: a bridge between data and practice

To give an example, road authorities keep track of their planned roadworks in Melvin (or a similar system like LTC), which was initially designed to coordinate road closures with other (neighboring) road authorities. This allows road authorities to easily see which closures are planned in their area. This data has been made available by NDW as an open data file for several years now, with the intention that service providers can take over the data. Many road authorities, for instance, assume that Google Maps directly adopts this source data in its navigation system. The reality, however, is different. Besides the problem of data quality, Google Maps cannot yet handle all the data that is provided. Quality checks and converting the data into a readable format are necessary, and this is where the value of our Wegstatus platform comes in. We have been helping road authorities for many years to get their data into navigation systems.

Melvin, detours, and the reality

Take the entry of detours into Melvin, for instance. A road authority often believes that Google Maps will adopt the detour, only to be disappointed when it doesn’t. A little secret: a navigation system cannot adopt proposed detour routes because the functionality works very differently. This means that road authorities need to handle this quite differently. Even when the RTTI legislation is passed, we expect this situation will not change. In short, be aware that RTTI is not the solution to everything. And yet, RTTI also offers many opportunities. It ensures that the digitalization of road-related data is gaining recognition across all European countries. It also helps other countries realize they need to start working on organizing their data. And these countries are very eager to have more influence over service providers and how road users are informed by companies like Google Maps. For now, there is still plenty of work for us to do in this area.