Web conference notes, 2025.10.23 (MDS Working Group)

MDS Working Group

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Agenda

Delivery: Goods, Food, Packages, Freight

Agenda

1. Intro and announcements (10 min)
2. Support Delivery of goods, food, packages, freight
   1. Discussion area, leave your needs and data requirements
   2. Led by Boston, with discussion from Portland, Blue Systems, LADOT
   3. Pull Request of suggested changes

WGSC Meeting Organizers

• Host: Pierre Bouffort, Blue Systems
• Facilitator: Michael Schnuerle, OMF
• Preparation: Michael Schnuerle, OMF
• Outreach: Michael Schnuerle, OMF
• Note taker: Michael Schnuerle, OMF

Action Items and Decisions

1. Discussion area, leave your needs and data requirements
   1. Are Incidents enough to track "unsafe and illegal operations by delivery drivers - i.e. speeding, illegal turn, double-parking, etc." - may need more incident types, like CDS Enforcements and Violations
   2. Clarify that shifts are made up of journeys, journeys made up of trips. Trips could have multiple orders, orders could have multiple packages.
   3. Might need array of package/orders details (delivery type, order_id, costs)
   4. Shift_id allows chaining of journeys. Is this the right name (some term bigger than a journey for freight solution), or is there another additional field needed?
   5. Digital policy - how does MDS Policy support density? Eg cap on number of vehicles in an area. New policy type needed?
   6. Statistical areas - Change to array from string? Is there only one area per event?
   7. If you want a statistical area for an end, but lat/lon for a start, how do you account for privacy? What change in spec could support this?

Minutes

• 53 Attendees
• OMF Slides
• Recording 1 - Password +&u7S?6s
• Recording 2 - Password +&u7S?6s

Notes

Over 200 commercial mobility service providers send MDS and CDS to cities, and receive it from cities. These companies operate in over 1,000 cities in dozens of countries around the world.

New OMF members: Serv Robotics, Bicycle Transit Systems, Turnstone

Boston Delivery Ordinance

• Art Pierce from Boston OMF Board is on call

• Sam and Amelia from Boston on call explaining ordinance

• Amelia sharing slides

• Focussed on companies that have 1 million orders or more and start or end in Boston

• Permit with OMF member Passport

• Use this as an educational opportunity as well for delivery drivers

• Info to support congestion management

• Came from concern on our streets from residents

• Also includes other info like "unsafe and illegal operations by delivery drivers - i.e. speeding, illegal turn, double-parking, etc." Could be put into new issue

MDS Delivery proposal

• Incidents in 2.1 including things that interrupt a trip

• MDS will support delivery of goods, food, packages, freight

• Portland and LADOT included their needs for Delivery

• MDS support all in Boston requirements, except for census FIPS code (in proposed change)

• Blue Systems: want to support multiple orders on trips. With freight we are going to have 100s of parcels and trips. Dozens of parcels possible for a trip end for a skyscraper

  • Shifts made up of journeys, journeys made up of trips. (Action: clarify this in spec)
  • would like a cargo quantity field or similar
  • might need array of package/orders details (delivery type, order_id. Cost, to assess fees?) - Action

• Portland needs type of delivery field

• With incidents, there is a report_id for external linking, could add order_id for Delivery

• Parcels add more quantity, vs food. Need to account for that

• Shifts made up of journeys, journeys made up of trips. Trips could have multiple orders, orders could have multiple packages... Action

• Could cross link delivery to CDS Events, for each item, get details with that instead of MDS

• Portland: Overlap of delivery of goods, then passenger trip in same vehicle.

  • Solution might be to record each trip in each relevant mode, ie Pass Services and Delivery each get trip details

• LADOT: Type of driver, interventions. Can come through in incidents

  • Multiple deliveries in a single trip
  • Digital policy - does MDS Policy support density. Eg cap on number of vehicles in an area, like robots at a building... Would need to be per operator - Action
  • Type of origin of trip/delivery
  • Software version of device, like in CDS

• Incidents proposal

  • Delivery in text, keep Delivery Robots in code, will change in MDS 2.0
  • Shift_id allows chaining of journeys. Is this the right name, is there another field needed? Some term bigger than a journey for freight solution. Action
  • Payload_type - might need to be an array, for each order and/or package
  • Statistical areas - Action change to array from string? Is there only one per event?
    • a company would need to know when their vehicles are in that area, eg census block, and send over that block id in MDS
    • vendors can help cities with this and integrations with operators
  • Can use custom areas with event_geographies - created by city, consumed and used by operators, they send along that ID back to city when vehicle event happens

• Recommend Boston and others use the Policy Requirements feature file, to clarify what fields you need for your program/ordinance. Can leave out end location, use statistical area instead, for example.

• Open question about overlapping trips and privacy, if you want a statistical area for an end, but lat/lon for a start, how do you account for privacy. Action

  • Maybe ask for census block for start as well, instead of lat/lon...

• Chicago and NYC are also interested in this.

• Leave your thoughts on GitHub, since we want to wrap this up in 2 months for CDS 2.1 release.

• Confirmed that the delivery app companies are the ones sending the MDS data, not the restaurants.

Chat

• 00:09:46 Aylene McCallum, Open Mobility Foundation: Welcome everyone! I'm Aylene McCallum, Director of Partnerships & Development at the OMF and I'm based in Denver, Colorado
• 00:09:50 Michael Schnuerle (OMF): Agenda for today https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-specification/wiki/Web-conference-notes,-2025.10.23-(MDS-Working-Group)
• 00:10:02 Bern Grush: Bern Grush, Urban Robotics Foundation, we draft ISO standard series ISO 4448 - Public-area mobile robots.
• 00:11:48 Chad Agate (Autolane): Replying to "Welcome everyone! I..."
• Hi Aylene!
• 00:14:48 Bern Grush: Bern Grush, Pudocity Inc, we develop systems for orchestrating AV pickup/drop-off for goods and passengers according to ISO DTS 25614
• 00:16:04 Nivel | Harald Sævareid: Harald Sævareid from Nivel, we deliver a complete platform to empower cities and businesses to get the most out of connected mobility, with geo-fencing and MDS data exchange. Let’s connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haraldsaevareid/
• 00:17:14 Andrew Glass Hastings (OMF): Hi all - thanks for being here! If you haven’t already please change your name in Zoom to include your organization, city or company. Scroll over your name and under ‘more’ chose rename. Thanks!
• 00:18:22 Michael Schnuerle (OMF): Boston’s MDS issue with data request: https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-specification/issues/957
• 00:18:31 stefan w Seattle DOT: Hello all. Stefan here - Seattle DOT Mobility Solutions Manager. Excited to learn about Boston’s approach.
• 00:15:09 Aylene McCallum, Open Mobility Foundation: Could you share more detail about the individual objectives related to some of the individual data requirements in the monthly reporting?
• 00:16:10 Raphael Dumas (City of Toronto): Fully respect the privacy concern, I feel like there's a tension between that (reducing the resolution of the dropoff location) and understanding curb usage. I would theorize some amount of illegal behaviour revolves around mismatch in supply & demand for curb
• 00:18:26 Raphael Dumas (City of Toronto): Replying to "Fully respect the pr..."
• If the majority of residential curb parking is going to be "illegal" feels like the privacy concern is being voided.
• 00:18:36 Bern Grush: @sam Brenner. I just met with Mass Robotics and ASTM regarding RELATED standards’ issues for mobile robotics including for delivery. So considerable overlap. Not competitive. Can we talk? [email protected]
• 00:19:51 Bern Grush: AND should apply to all types of PMRs (security, maintenance, etc., operating in SAME SPACES!)
• 00:20:05 Raphael Dumas (City of Toronto): Should the icon be box related so it is more inclusive of the variety of modes carrying the "boxes"?
• 00:20:05 Sam Brenner | City of Boston: @bern happy to chat! My office (Office of Emerging Technology) has worked with the MassRobotics in the past
• 00:20:26 stefan w Seattle DOT: A few questions (that you may have covered and I missed): Is the MDS account attached to the delivery driver or a vehicle? (Thinking about someone who may switch modes or vehicles); How does the driver submit this information? (Assuming it is manually within a mobile app? If so can you talk more about the app on their phone?) Thanks!
• EDIT: I’m also realizing that this may be targeting a larger app that is pushing this to various drivers. So, in that case, I suppose the entry is happening through the delivery app. (Strike my former questions)
• EDIT2: agree with the Pierre comment on tracking the trip as opposed to every individual order. Seems more scalable.
• 00:20:27 Jeff Lambart | City of Boston: Replying to "Fully respect the ..."
• @Amelia Capone (Boston) - correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe for illegal behavior we are primarily concerned with excessive speed and traveling the wrong way down one way streets
• 00:21:07 Bern Grush: @sam I sent LI connect request
• 00:21:17 Sam Brenner | City of Boston: @Aylene McCallum, Open Mobility Foundation - The primary objectives are improving safety and reducing congestion. The data requirements are all designed for understanding movement patterns with some degree of anonymity
• 00:21:51 Shin-pei Tsay | City of Boston: Replying to "Fully respect the pr..."
• Excessive speed, wrong way, double parking at the curb, and mopeds using bike lanes
• 00:24:58 Bern Grush: Device ID is CRITICAL for many other PMR standards issues. Not just delivery.
• 00:24:58 Bern Grush: Standards need to be focussed on PLACE, CONTEXT. “Delivery” is merely one case. Already 23 states and 6 countries have this built-in language constraint. Only Estonia sorted this, and only after 2nd rewrite!
• 00:28:53 Shin-pei Tsay | City of Boston: The main difference between freight and food though is that delivery platforms are more point to point, 1:1 or 1:5 at most, whereas freight can have much more volume
• 00:29:08 Shin-pei Tsay | City of Boston: Also food platforms tend to be on-demand whereas freight isn’t necessarily on-demand
• 00:29:12 Bern Grush: how many PUDO points rather than “package count”
• 00:29:38 Raphael Dumas (City of Toronto): Re: pooling, we do this to deduplicate pooled trips by ride-hailing (reorder events by timestamps), could a post-hoc data processing do this and calculate cumulative "ons" and "offs" to get a load in the vehicle by time?
• 00:33:10 Anna Ward (Blue Systems): Any cities on the call that are interested in learning more about this from Blue Systems, feel free to reach out to me: [email protected]
• 00:35:54 Michael Schnuerle (OMF): Pull request https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-specification/pull/959
• 00:40:20 Bern Grush: @chad. I am reaching out to you on LI re Pudocity. (says Ben)
• 00:45:28 Aylene McCallum, Open Mobility Foundation: We really appreciate everyone who was able to make it today - and your robust conversation in the chat! If you would like to set up a one on one conversation about this or anything else related to our work, please don't hesitate to reach out to me at [email protected] OR feel free to add to the conversation on GitHub.
• 00:46:20 Aylene McCallum, Open Mobility Foundation: As a reminder, this work to shepherd these conversations is supported by our public and commercial members! Thank you!
• If your organization would like to explore membership as well, please reach out.
• 00:48:03 Chad Agate (Autolane): Replying to "@chad. I am reaching..."
• @Bern Grush sounds great! Looking forward to the chat. [email protected]
• 00:50:14 Raphael Dumas (City of Toronto): I have to bounce. Interesting discussion!
• 00:50:34 Amelia Capone (Boston): Thanks everyone for the support and ideas!
• 00:51:41 Michael Schwartz, INRIX: How does the proposal want to work out the fact that the beginning of a chained trip (journey) is also the end of the previous trip? Kind of negates the privacy approach of having the trip ends relate to geographies rather than lat/longs
• 00:52:22 Shin-pei Tsay | City of Boston: Thanks for the great discussion
• 00:53:06 Bern Grush: Thank you for all this, Michael, Aylene, and Andrew!
• 00:53:46 stefan w Seattle DOT: Thank you Boston, and OMF team. Will be considering much of this with our team in Seattle.
• 00:53:59 Aylene McCallum, Open Mobility Foundation: The question Michael poses is a great example of a question our community can help address
• 00:54:52 Jeff Lambart | City of Boston: I have to jump off but this is so useful for our implementation - thank you all!
• 00:56:48 Chad Agate (Autolane): I’m really curious if anyone has started to put this in practice with the TNCs and Delivery Apps? Do the APIs exist to get this data?
• 00:58:36 Jeannie Park (LADOT): Thanks everyone!