At Mobility Lab’s event with Ray LaHood yesterday, the former U.S. Transportation Secretary said that transit agencies “should be required” to open their data to developers.
For some agencies, this could be a major undertaking. But for agencies participating in Google Transit, it’s easy. They are already preparing their route and schedule information in the industry-standard GTFS format. You might think that they would offer the exact same feed to other transit software developers and innovators, but, surprisingly, many don’t.
Unlike many of the requests transit agencies get – to create new routes, increase service levels – releasing data that is already available in a commonly-used format is an easy way to improve rider experience and encourage innovation. Because the data is already being produced for Google, there’s no additional cost or burden for the agency.
In the Washington D.C. region, there are several agencies that participate in Google Transit but don’t otherwise make their data available:
For users of transit apps that are dependent on open data, it’s as though the services provided by these agencies simply don’t exist. In 2013, open data is hardly a new concept, and gaps like these are simply unacceptable.
More broadly, every agency that participates in Google Transit should also make its GTFS feed freely and easily available on the web. Slightly further afield, GRTC, the transit system for Richmond, Virginia, proudly touts its participation in Google Transit – yet its GTFS feed is nowhere to be found. The same goes for Rabbit Transit, in York County, Pennsylvania. These are just a few examples. There are many transit systems across the country and around the world that participate in Google Transit but fail to release their data for developers.
Perhaps these agencies don’t realize the immense value of open data, or perhaps they’d like to release their data, but the effort has gotten tangled up in bureaucracy. Often, transit agencies and their lawyers are paralyzed by fear over the legal implications of opening their data to developers, and they sometimes come up with cumbersome, pages-long contracts which must be executed before developers can access the data. The reality is that opening data doesn’t have to come with legal complexity, as BART’s exemplary Developer License Agreement shows.
Though our region is often lauded for its progressive approach to transportation, there still are too many agencies with closed datasets. Mobility Lab calls on these transit agencies to share their GTFS feeds – open data that they’ve already produced and can release at no additional cost or burden – to help power the next generation of innovation in transit.
Photo by Lars Kristian Flem