Reference NeTEx profile for each country (EU member state) is based on “Passenger Information European Profile” (EPIP), which is described in

• SIST-TS CEN/TS 16614-4:2020 Public transport - Network and Timetable Exchange (NeTEx) - Part 4: Passenger Information European Profile

Typical use cases of the EPIP:

• Provision of data for journey planners
• Provision of data to a path mapping software tool on an (interactive) map
• Provision of timetable printout data
• Provision of station information

Since 2017, EPIP has received a great deal of attention from IT developers in the field of public transport, which they implement in journey planning software solutions.

The current version of EPIP is a subset of two parts (out of three) of the full version of NeTEx, namely:

• NeTEx Part 1 (Public transport — Network and Timetable Exchange (NeTEx) — Part 1: Public transport network topology exchange format, CEN TS 16614-1:2014)
• NeTEx Part 2 (Public transport — Network and Timetable Exchange (NeTEx) — Part 2: Public transport scheduled timetables exchange, CEN TS 16614-2:2014)

EPIP represents an agreed minimum of concepts and data structures for the exchange of public transport data for EU countries. Most of the countries that participated in the preparation of the EPIP have a very diverse public transport (F, NL, UK, NO, CH, DE), so we can expect that the data of public transport in Slovenia will be easily converted into NeTEx or EPIP. The fact that EPIP includes more than one main form of public transport (air, bus, trolleybus, coach, funicular, metro, tram, cableway, rail, water, ferry, elevator and other) ensures the translation of Slovenian public transport data into EPIP or NeTEx. In addition to forms of public transport, other forms of transport (walk, car, taxi, cycle, movingWalkway) are also supported by NeTEx, because they relate to public transport and are also interesting for Slovenia.

EPIP does not yet include ticket concepts already defined in the third part of NeTEx (Public transport — Network and Timetable Exchange (NeTEx) — Part 3: Public transport fares exchange format, CEN TS 16614-3:2016). The ticket description can be included in the EPIP-based data exchange, but it should be noted that over time it will be necessary to adapt to the ticket profile for which there is an initiative as a »complementary and separate European Fare Profile«. We can also expect an extension of EPIP with Accessibility Profile (accesibility concepts for passengers with disabilities). These extentions refer to new technical specification documents and XSD schemas for XML. Due to the modularity of XML schemas, these extensions will not devalue existing EPIP-compliant documents, they will only need to be extended with references to new schemas and use additional XML elements.

The basis for the implementation of the draft reference NeTEx profile for the exchange of static traffic data of the Integrated Public Passenger Transport was prepared by three expert groups:

• Transmodel expert group (http://www.transmodel-cen.eu), wich operates under the auspices of the CEN ITS WG3 Transmodel working group (Reference Data Model, https://www.itsstandards.eu/pt)
• NeTEx expert group (http://netex-cen.eu), wich operates under the auspices of the CEN ITS WG3 NeTEx working group (Network and Timetable Exchange), https://www.itsstandards.eu/pt)

For the implementation of Slovenian cases compliant with EPIP, folowing resources are needed:

• NeTEx Part 1 (Public transport — Network and Timetable Exchange (NeTEx) — Part 1: Public transport network topology exchange format, prCEN TS 16614-1) is a technical specification for describing elements of a public transport network topology.
• “white paper” NeTEx-Network-WhitePaper_1.08 describes NeTEx's network concept in a non-expert way.
• NeTEx Part 2 (Public transport — Network and Timetable Exchange (NeTEx) — Part 2: Public transport scheduled timetables exchange, prCEN TS 16614-2) is a technical specification for describing elements of planned public transport timetables.
• “white paper” 09.NeTEx-Timetable-WhitePaper_1.05 describes NeTEx's timetable in a non-expert way (an example of a Slovenian timetable is also included).
• XML schemas for the NeTEx are available in the GitHub repository (https://github.com/NeTEx-CEN/NeTEx). Local cloning of the repository using the Git client is proposed, thus ensuring always up-to-date versions of the schemas during development. For EPIP, we will use the schemas in the xsd folder, which contains schemes due to the optimized modular structure of NeTEx. The entry scheme for most real cases is NeTEx_publication.xsd. “Publication” in this context refers to the publication of information of public transport (eg stops, timetables, tickets).
• Examples of XML documents (also a Slovenian example) in the GitHub repository (»functions« subfolder).
• Draft technical specification EPIP “NeTEx - Passenger Information European Profile” (prCEN TS 16614:PI Profile), which contains the specification of classes and their properties, and an explanation of their use. The document is additional literature for implementing the conversion from IJPP to EPIP and vice versa.
• NeTEx timetable description is presented in document 09.NeTEx-Timetable-WhitePaper_1.05.

The basic concepts for EPIP are described in the data dictionary in Annex A of the NeTEx - Passenger Information European Profile. These are concepts that are agreed upon for exchange in accordance with EPIP. The document to be exchanged is a physical record of PPP data in XML format that complies with NeTEx XSD schemas. The basic (initial) XSD schema is NeTEx _publication.xsd.

An example of a Slovenian timetable written in accordance with EPIP is presented in a document on GitHub: https://github.com/NeTEx-CEN/NeTEx/blob/master/examples/functions/timetable/Netex_09.2_Bus_SimpleTimetable_Slovenia.xml

Slovenian NeTEx profile