Los Angeles Metro timetables. Photo by Flickr user simon_shek.
Last weekend I participated in TransportationCamp West, an “unconference” in San Francisco that explored the intersection of urban transportation and technology. This is the third article in a series I’m writing, each inspired by sessions I attended.
On our behalf, government transportation agencies have amassed massive datasets that are largely walled off from public consumption. In some cases access to this data that was already paid for by the taxpayers can be gained by paying a fee, but there is no guarantee that it will be in a usable standard format. Agencies that continue to operate in this opaque manner are not only doing a disservice to the people they serve but they are missing out on a wave of innovation that is rapidly changing the way people get around.
Transit agencies have long considered themselves the gatekeepers of schedule and route information, and the only way to consume that information has been by poring over timetables and maps. With transit’s primary competition being a personal car and a GPS-enabled phone, this becomes a barrier for people wanting to try other modes of transport. Yet to this day the paper timetable is still a primary source of transit information in many cities – even on most transit agency websites you’re lucky if you can find a PDF of a timetable.
Open data allows for affordable innovation
A traditional government solution to this problem would be to hire a contractor to come in, peruse the data, and maybe build a display that shows when the next train is scheduled to come to a given stop. While this is an improvement over the paper timetable, it could cost the government thousands of dollars. Instead, major agencies in cities such as San Francisco are releasing public data to the public – this novel idea allows for developers to incorporate it into applications and begin to solve problems that create a barrier for new transit users at practically no cost to the government. During a time of reduced government spending, open data allows for affordable innovations that can make transit easier to use.
Finding a bus stop for the line you want can sometimes be a challenge, so there are now iPhone augmented reality applications that point you to the nearest transit stops. There are websites and applications that display real-time bus locations on a map and tell you when the next vehicle will be by to pick you up. You can quickly plot a trip from one location to another while minimizing the time you are spending standing at stops.
As more agencies have realized the benefits of data transparency, innovation has flourished. With a new standard for distributing transit data online – the Google-developed General Transit Feed Specification, or GTFS – there is now a blueprint for agencies to bring the benefits of open transit data to more riders in more places. The liberation of data is a very important tool in making transit more user-friendly which will ultimately encourage better mode choices in our cities and towns.
