Open Data: Challenges and Opportunities for Transit Agencies (2015) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Pages 8-34
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9 basic principle that the data are free to use, reuse, and redistribute. According to the Open Data Institute (2)
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10 On January 21, 2009, President Obama issued an Open Government Directive, which directed executive departments and agencies to take actions that support transparency, participation, and collaboration: Transparency promotes accountability by providing the public with information about what the Government is doing. Participation allows members of the public to contribute ideas and expertise so that their government can make policies with the benefit of information that is widely dispersed in society.
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11 and enhanced public policy and service delivery. For transportation, the open data movement has fundamentally shifted how agencies communicate with users as an increasing number move from tightly controlling data and the products derived from them, towards generating and releasing data with minimal control over the end products.
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12 the points of interaction, or Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) , needed for third-party software developers to access dynamic, real-time data feeds of bus and train location information.
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13 includes making public value judgments, identifying stakeholders and uncovering the impacts that initiative will have on those stakeholder interests" (13)
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14 devices. In this magnitude, static data are all transit schedules/routes/stops, and real-time data are all estimated arrivals/vehicle positions/service alerts; and • "Faucet," which is a precise subset of transit data and is suitable for mobile devices.
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15 FIGURE 6 U.S. City Open Data Census -- State of Open Transit Data (22)
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16 public data for re-use: non-proprietary, machine-readable, and accessible via the web, and licensed for reuse (27)
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17 shapes, frequencies, transfers and feed info)
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18 Google Transit's trip planner and, increasingly, opening these data to other third-party application developers (32, p.
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19 Optional data types that can be provided through GTFS are as follows: • Exceptions for when service starts and ends, and days of the week when service is available; • Fare information for a transit organization's routes; • Rules for applying fare information for a transit organization's routes; • Rules for drawing lines on a map to represent a transit organization's routes; • Headway (time between trips) for routes with variable frequency of service; • Rules for making connections at transfer points between routes; and • Additional information about the feed itself, including publisher, version, and expiration information.
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20 Washington and deployed in the Puget Sound area of Washington state. OneBusAway leverages the GTFS data format for schedule transit data, but the original Puget Sound deployment did not use a standardized interface for sharing real-time transit data with mobile apps.
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21 As discussed, APTA's survey examined the use of APIs. Two-thirds of those agencies with real-time information provide an interface so app developers can utilize that information independent from the agency.
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22 Timothy Moore, with BART, suggests that a simple license may be the most appropriate for open transit data (62)
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23 and even make it fun for our industry and third party developers to discuss these issues.
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24 Antrim and Barbeau describe some of the types of applications that use open transit data (60) : • Trip planning and maps -- applications that assist a transit customer in planning a trip from one location to another using public transportation.
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25 Figures 17 and 18 show the results of TCQSM analyses using GTFS data. Antrim and Barbeau (60)
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26 FIGURE 17 Distribution of stop-route level daily headways for the SEPTA bus system (18, p.
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27 Mapping and data visualizations are effective tools for communicating the robust data and information within the GTFS by providing clarity to service levels which the data doesn't naturally produce. This can help articulate the impact of an agency's service changes and service cuts (75)
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28 FIGURE 20 Transit times by public transport to secondary schools in Wales, with an arrival time of 9:00 a.m.
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29 There are examples of nontransit visualizations using open data, such as the one shown in Figure 25, which displays the problem areas in the United States for flying, displaying airports with delays and flight cancellations. COSTS AND BENEFITS The costs associated with providing open transit data have been documented in a limited number of documents.
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30 automatically generate GTFS feeds) but allows for minimal human input which minimizes errors in data translation to GTFS; • Web service for hosting data; • Personnel time to update and maintain data as needed; and • Personnel time to liaise with data users One example of costs is provided in Wong et al.
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31 their rail, tube or bus travel, find a parking space, or evade road works, or which through Google Now even help predict planning for journeys you are about to take. The Deloitte report for Stephan Shakespeare's independent review of Public Sector Information found there had been more than 4 million downloads of apps using transport data in London alone.
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32 TCRP Synthesis 91 discusses some of the benefits just being realized by open transit data (1, pp.
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33 • Developer challenges • Hack days • Media events • Transit camps • "Find a politician willing to get in front of a camera! " Barbeau (100)
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34 An example of open data creating a positive impact is the District of Columbia DC Circulator Dashboard (circulatordashboard.dc.gov)
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35 In terms of challenges, James Wong, Landon Reed, Kari Watkins, and Regan Hammond discuss data integrity and maintenance as critical issues (33)
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