MDS Technical FAQ
Answering some common technical questions about MDS, data, and implementation.
The Open Mobility Foundation (OMF) does not have any direct or indirect access to Mobility Data Specification (MDS) data from providers or agencies, unless the endpoints are public (for example, in the Policy, Geography, or Jurisdiction APIs). You may choose to contact providers or agencies directly if you need access to MDS data for research or other purposes, or see if they have published any data publicly.
A Provider ID is required for using MDS as a provider sharing data with agencies. Find out how to get one in our Adding a Provider ID help document.
An Agency ID is required for using Policy Requirements. Find out how to get one in our Adding an Agency ID help document.
UUIDs are used across MDS to identify providers, agencies, vehicles, geographies, policies, and more. They are officially defined within MDS here.
Your UUIDs should follow the UUID format, eg, 123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000. Note the mix of numbers, letters A to F, and dashes. See this Wikipedia link for general details.
For vehicle UUIDs, you need to generate a UUID for each vehicle, and likely store it in your internal database for consistency. You can generate these at random using UUID version 4, or with your server/computer date/time plus mac address using UUID version 1.
In Python, you should be able to do this natively with the uuid.uuid4() function
