Research and Commentary¶

Blog posts, and reports related to open transit data.

Blog posts¶

When(ish) is my bus? Data and code - The data and code (R) behind Whenish is my bus? Data includes three days of historical vehicle positions and the survey results.
"Legacy AVL system? It's okay, join the club." by Kurt Raschke - Discussion of options for transforming legacy AVL system data into the GTFS-realtime format.
"GTFS Best Practices now available!" by Sean Barbeau - Discusses some of the challenges of an open data format like GTFS and the GTFS Best Practices that were launched in early 2017 to help address data quality.
"What's new in GTFS-realtime v2.0" by Sean Barbeau - Discuss the shortfalls in GTFS-realtime v1.0 and the improvements in v2.0.
"AVL, CAD, and Real-Time Passenger Info for Beginners" by Tony Laidig - Provides a general introduction to technology used to track vehicles.
"Visualizing Better Transportation: Data & Tools" by Steve Pepple - A collection of transportation-related data and tools for the San Francisco Bay Area and other cities in North America, originally collected and discussed at a 2018 Transit Week Event at ARUP in San Francisco.
"How to use GTFS data to track transit vehicles in realtime" by Tom Camp - Using GTFS and GTFS Realtime to provide continuous realtime updates.

Academic papers¶

Tang et al. - "Ridership effects of real-time bus information system: A case study in the City of Chicago" - Experiment in Chicago, IL showed modest increase in ridership when riders had access to real-time info via text message or email.
Kay et al. - "When(ish) is my bus? User-centered Visualizations of Uncertainty in Everyday, Mobile Predictive Systems" - Paper attempts to answr the question of "how do we communicate uncertainty in transit predictions?" Explains the problem, existing solutions and designs a better interface for letting users know when to arrive at the bus stop.
Watkins et al. - "Where Is My Bus? Impact of mobile real-time information on the perceived and actual wait time of transit riders" - Experiments in Seattl,e WA showed that riders perceived shorter bus wait times when they had access to real-time info via mobile apps.
Brakewood et al. - “An experiment evaluating the impacts of real-time transit information on bus riders in Tampa, Florida” - Controlled experiment in Tampa, FL showed that riders with access to real-time info via mobile apps perceived nearly 2 minute reduction in wait times compared to riders without real-time info. Riders with real-time info also had decreases in anxiety and frustration and better reception of agency.
Brakewood et al. - "The impact of real-time information on bus ridership in New York City" - Experiment in NYC showed that ridership increased on long routes when real-time info was made available to riders.
Brakewood and Watkins - "A literature review of the passenger benefits of real-time transit information" (2018) - An overview of many different research studies looking at the benefits of real-time transit information.
Gramacki et al. - "gtfs2vec - Learning GTFS Embeddings for comparing Public Transport Offer in Microregions" - Methology using Uber's H3 spatial index and machine learning to identify areas of "similar" public transit service quality in cities. Source code available on GitHub.
Higgins et al. - "Calculating place-based transit accessibility: Methods, tools and algorithmic dependence" (2022) - Compares software tools for calculating accessibility by walking and public transit including ArcGIS Pro, Emme, R5R, and OpenTripPlanner.
Aemmer et al. - "Measurement and classification of transit delays using GTFS-RT data" - Presents a method for extracting transit performance metrics from a General Transit Feed Specification’s Real-Time (GTFS-RT) component and aggregating them to roadway segments. Used with Transit Vis, viewable here.

Government reports¶

APTA Policy Development and Research - Public Transportation Embracing Open Data - APTA's discussion of the benefits and challenges of open transit data (a short summary of the below TCRP report).
TCRP Synthesis 115 - Open Data: Challenges and Opportunities for Transit Agencies (2015) - A comprehensive report looking at the benefits and challenges of open transit data.
TCRP Research Report 213: Data Sharing Guidance for Public Transit Agencies – Now and in the Future (2020) - A report designed to help agencies make decisions about sharing their data, including how to evaluate benefits, costs, and risks.
TCRP G-16 Development of Transactional Data Specifications for Demand-Responsive Transportation (In progress) - The objective of this research is to develop technical specifications for transactional data for entities involved in the provision of demand-responsive transportation. Expected completion date is late 2018.

Community-maintained lists¶

Vendors Providing GTFS Creation/Maintenance services - Add new vendors here.
Entities Providing Transportation Software Development Consulting Services - Add new entities here.