Mobility Data Specification (MDS)

Saturday. June 01, 2019 - 1 min

The Mobility Data Specification (MDS), a project of the Open Mobility Foundation (OMF), is a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) focused on dockless e-scooters, bicycles, mopeds and carshare. Inspired by projects like GTFS and GBFS, the goals of MDS are to provide a standardized way for municipalities or other regulatory agencies to ingest, compare and analyze data from mobility service providers, and to give municipalities the ability to express regulation in machine-readable formats.

MDS helps cities interact with companies who operate dockless scooters, bicycles, mopeds and carshare in the public right-of-way. MDS is a key piece of digital infrastructure that supports the effective implementation of mobility policies in cities around the world.

MDS is an open-source project. It was originally created by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT). In November 2019, stewardship of MDS and the ownership of this repository was transferred to the Open Mobility Foundation. GitHub automatically redirects any links to this repository in the CityOfLosAngeles organization to the openmobilityfoundation instead. MDS continues to be used by LADOT and many other municipalities.

Working with LADOT I helped launch the first implementation of MDS to manage the citywide eScooter and eBike program. LADOT is now extending the use to taxis, car share and curb management.

Check it out here.

Sean Holman

Open mobility. Always exploring.