New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) manages one of the world’s busiest and most complex transit systems. Each day, millions of people ride its subways, buses and commuter railroads.
For years, useful MTA data – including route schedules, service disruptions, and station details – were unavailable to software developers. While these data are technically public domain and available under the Freedom of Information Law, the MTA (like many transit agencies) faced many obstacles to providing it to developers. Internal regulations, licensing issues, and concerns about data quality hampered efforts to release the data, and the relationship between MTA and developers had become litigious.
In 2009, OpenPlans began a dialogue with the MTA about the benefits of making their data more open and accessible to application developers and the public. “Open” data allows software developers all over the world to build transit-oriented applications that transit agencies may not have time or funding to work on themselves. These tools then create a more seamless transportation experience for riders. In short, everyone wins when data is open.
To help convince the MTA to open up its data, we first built a community of interest. We convened a working group and invited relevant stakeholders, including the MTA. More than 150 software developers and transit advocates joined in. This group developed a set of recommendations regarding transit data policies and effectively helped the MTA structure and kick-start its developer outreach program. Some of the lessons learned can be found here.
The MTA soon embraced open data, and the community proved key to helping figure out exactly what data developers needed and how best to provide it. Without expensive studies and guesswork, the MTA was able to open their data quickly and effectively.
In May 2010, MTA held a developers conference to generate and build on good ideas, and to maximize the benefits of open data, for developers, MTA staff, and ultimately for transit riders.
Today, the MTA continues to open its doors to applications developers. Their Developer Resources Group provides real-time access to issues and solutions relating to the MTA’s operations. As the agency makes large-scale upgrades – such as real-time bus tracking – developers will be able to build even more useful applications. The result? Riders will get access to the information they need, more rapidly and at a lower cost than would have been the case had data remained closed.
“Today is a whole new world in the relationship between MTA and developer such as myself,” says Chris Shoenfeld, developer of StationStops, a popular application that uses agency data. “We have defined an active channel of communication moderated by very capable and communicative representatives at MTA, as well as very significant progress in the exporting of data sets. MTA shows developers consistently that it is dedicated to supporting them.”
To learn more about the benefits of opening up transit data to developers, see the video below, which we made to show how other cities can see the benefits of open transit data.
If you’re interested in participating in the ongoing dialogue in NYC, join the NY Transit Data Meetup. For more on “open transportation” in general, check out our Open Transportation tumblog. Or, contact us to learn how OpenPlans can help agencies of all kinds open up their data to help transit riders.