At a recent Geo Tech (aka. GeoGeek) meetup here in Victoria, BC, Canada I was glad to see that Michael Grant, BC Transit Manager of planning and forecasting was in attendance to talk us about Geo technology, transit, and mapping. Grant was there to discuss BC Transit data, Google maps, and other related GeoTech topics of interest.
In all fairness to Michael, his department has a huge task at hand, here in B.C., BC Transit is charged with managing the buses and routes for the entire province (some 83 regional systems), with the exception of the Vancouver area where that falls under the jurisdiction of an agency called Translink. At first glance, I have to think that the massive area of coverage is perhaps the first stumbling block that the agency is faced with. Additionally, I’m sure that staffing, funding, and resources is another huge obstacle to advances in technology. The team has been making headway (they are users of Esri technology as well as FME from Safe Software and Michael is a big fan of Python as well), apparently most efforts to date have been to get a database in order and structure data and workflows in a manner that application development is facilitated. Ideally though, what is needed is for data to be structured and made available in an open environment where it is readily accessible and available for developers to run with it. For the public to wait on B.C Transit (or many other Transit agencies for that matter) to roll out innovative apps and services is crazy and simply won’t happen – not any time soon that is!
It all boils down to the data! In all honestly, I was hugely surprised that only recently did B.C. Transit implement a unique numbering system and database associated with bus stops, however, now that this has been done the data are ready for use in Google Transit and should enable even more app development. On the upside, steps are being made to develop and maintain data products in a manner that should foster some innovation. We can only hope that data will be made available in an open manner. Seems to me, however, that when the topic of imagery, photos, and real-time data come up that issues such as privacy and union concerns may be an obstacle.
Moving forward, B.C. Transit, like many Transit agencies around the country are taking advantage of Google and their tools to help get their data in the hands of users. Here in Victoria (the B.C. capital city) Transit data is now available via Google Transit and does enable users to view bus stops, plan trips, and see schedules, however, more is needed. Having access to transit data for trip planning from the PC is all and fine, however, for transit data to be truly useful and accessible it needs to be made available to the mobile user and compelling mobile apps are needed. In order for this to happen the developers are needed and data must be open and accessible.
B.C Transit data on Google Maps puts schedules online
Once data is in GFTS users of Google Maps Transit service can perform routing
Google Tools and GFTS
Google has created specification that are spelled out in the GoogleTransitDataFeed Open Source Software project. This is an effort to offer tools for reading, writing, and converting to and from the General Transit Feed Specification format, to help make public transit information projects more successful for agencies and other interested parties. Google has a home for this project online at http://code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/
The General Transit Feed Specification (GFTS) – http://code.google.com/transit/spec/transit_feed_specification.html
Additionally, a detailed wiki with helpful information and docs is available for developers at http://code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/w/list and participating agencies can also take advantage of a feed validator
To date, a number of agencies have made available GFTS real time data feeds – these contain scheduled times, stop locations, route information and optionally fare information and detailed route shapes. Most, if not all, agencies have statements of license as well as legal disclaimers. A lengthy list of these feeds can be found online HERE
A handy list of agencies participating in the GFTS data project can be found at http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com/agencies#filter_official. An RSS feed of all data updates is provided along with a detailed list of participating agencies including a note about the date of most recent update. Specific details about the BC Transit data feed can be found at http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com/agency/bc-transit/ and the actual data uploaded by the agency is also provided in a ZIP file
For transit agencies that adopt and implement the GFTS into their business processes innovation should come. For developers, I’m convinced that the opportunities are huge, imagine a tool or service that enables any transit authority to plug in or feed their data through the service and the results are passed along to Google transit and perhaps fed into a mobile service – opportunity is there! In my mind, the transit case is the classic Geo and mobile geo apps example, much like the search for a coffee shop example in local search. Transit riders are mobile as is the data and ideally, a real-time information system is what all transit agencies should be striving towards. Riders do need trip planning tools, however, they really need access to routing, bus schedules, and real time location data (like arrival time, or x minutes till the bus gets here) and they need it on their mobile handset while waiting at a bus stop in the cold and rain. The static, online PDF bus schedule is not needed nor is it useful, transit agencies much like big government need to be the platform providing developers with access to data.
Examples and Useful Links:
- San Diego MTS has put their Google Transit trip planner on their website
- How to provide open data
- Details of B.C Transit Google Trip Planner
- BC Transit on Google maps
- Plan a trip using public transportation with Google Maps
- Transloc Transit Visualization – a favorite service of mine!
Mobile transit apps are popping up all the time. Some favorite examples I’ve seen include Transloc, a service in the U Michigan mobile app, and the city of Portland. There’s many others as well.
An example app – Transloc service for U Chicago
