[Gllug] Petition to open London government geodata?

[Rev Simon Rumble]

Hi folks.

For some background, have a look at this:
http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/user/XSLT_REQUEST?language=en&itdLPxx_view=AddToWebsite2

And then try actually USING their stupid site.  Short-timeout sessions. 
Badly implemented maps (PDF ferfuxxake, and separate for each leg of the
journey).  Much too optimistic assumptions about changeovers between
different transport modes and lines (recommending a route that takes
three buses which in theory gets you there 5 minutes earlier than a tube
route).  All sorts of stupidity going on here.

Now imagine if this data were readily available through free, open feeds.
 Then What about the things you haven't even thought of doing.  For
inspiration try [1]BBC Backstage to see some of the cool shit people are
doing with data the BBC are making available.  Or some of the [2]cool
[3]shit people have been doing, probably illegally and without any help
from TFL using screenscraping; and some of the [4]really cool shit
people have been doing with Google Maps and the like.

TFL has a huge amount of really useful data at their fingertips.  Travel
routes (road, rail, tube, bus, bicycle) and timetables.  Service running
information.  Think about what we could do with this!

So what do people think about a petition to Ken to open up this data? 
The public benefits fo this data being freely available would _vastly_
outweigh whatever probably puny amount of money TFL are making by
licensing this data to others.  How could such a petition be pitched to
non-geeks?

[1]: http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/
[2]:
http://drinkbroken.typepad.com/drink_broken/2005/10/weve_been_talki.html
[3]: http://homepage.mac.com/balazsboros/tubetrack/
[4]: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/
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