Open data empowers your riders to enjoy their journey. It provides them with high quality trip plans and information in their favorite app or website. This increases satisfaction and unlocks potential for new riders.
What is open data?
Open Data is structured data that is machine-readable, freely shared, used and built-on without restrictions. The defacto standard for transit schedule information is the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS)
GTFS data is consumed by a wide variety of applications that allow riders to plan their journey and see the timetable for a specific stop, sometimes even providing riders with step-by-step directions during their trip, even telling them when and where to get on and off.
Open data can also be used with variable message signs located at transit stops to display departure information. Other tools can also provide handy statistics about service hours and network distances.
Why should your agency provide open data to riders?
1. It’s easy for riders to use.
- There are a multitude of 3rd party, web-enabled and mobile apps that consume GTFS data.
- With open data, riders can now conveniently plan their trips directly on their mobile devices, without referring to a printed timetable.
- Gone are the days of the 10 year-old, self-hosted clunky trip planner and line-ups for timetable flyers!
2. It can save you time and money
- With many riders planning their trips with apps, fewer riders need trip planning help, thus reducing call center hold times for those who need to reach out to you.
- The vast majority of GTFS-consuming services are offered free of charge to transit agencies and riders alike.
- You can reduce or eliminate expensive timetable pamphlets that you have to manage, print and update.
3. It’s flexible and provides seamless integration
- GTFS data can easily accomodate special schedules for holidays and other events, as well as planned service disruptions.
- Many GTFS-consuming trip planners allow for seamless agency-to-agency trip planning.
- In many areas, large intercity travel providers provide data to apps, enabling city-to-city travel plans.
4. It can provide useful insights
- Many data consuming applications and websites provide transit agency dashboards that can show insightful data such as how many people selected a transit line and can help to highlight ridership trends.
5. It’s expandable
- Service alerts can easily be published via the GTFS-Realtime service alerts system.
Many applications even provide an interface to notify riders via a push notification in case of a disruption. - Even if you don’t currently have a Computer-aided dispatch or automatic vehicle location system (CAD/AVL), most new CAD/AVL systems include the possibility of producing GTFS-Realtime data. This data, based on GTFS-Static data, allows for up-to-the-minute adjustments to reflect traffic conditions.
Why choose Brody Flannigan Transit Data?
- Full open data services
- Fast turnaround time
- Your agency maintains full ownership of data.
- Error-free data guarantee*
- Custom-tailored data for each agency (ranging from the name of a route to the symbol used to indicate cross streets, we won’t hesitate to get in touch to make sure your data is just right)
- Competitive pricing; it costs less than you might think to provide your riders with the world-class information they expect.
*In the unfortunate event your published data fails validation using the standard validation tool, your agency will not be billed for the time it takes to make the appropriate corrections to the data.