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How Google Is Remapping Public Transportation
waderoush writes "Google wants to 'organize the world's information,' but there isn't a marketplace or a category of knowledge it can organize without remaking it in the process. A case in point: public transportation. Largely outside the media spotlight, Google has wrought a quiet revolution over the last five years in the way commuters get schedule information for local buses and trains, and the way public transit agencies communicate with their riders. GTFS and GTFS-realtime, which Google invented, have become the de facto world standards for sharing transit data, and have opened up space for a whole ecosystem of third-party transit app developers. This in-depth article looks at the history of GTFS and Google's efforts to give people information (largely via their smartphones) that can help them plan their commutes on public transportation — and, not incidentally, drive a lot less."
It would be better if every agency made their GTFS feed public, that's for sure. I never figured out why more don't do that, since it really doesn't require any additional work on the part of the outfit to post the zip file on their website somewhere.
I would encourage anyone who lives in a city who is on Google Transit but doesn't put the GTFS feed on their website to call, send email, come to transit board meetings, etc and encourage them to post the data publicly . If you live in a city where the data is already posted, create works that extend the data (or help others do so) to help make the format more useful for everyone. Even if Google stops supporting Transit in the future, the GTFS data is still invaluable for anyone who creates software that helps other transit riders get around easier.