Earlier this month, the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) introduced stakeholders to a new effort to construct a statewide General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) clearinghouse and dataset. GTFS is a worldwide data standard for public transit, providing schedule, route, and stop information.
As part of its Statewide GTFS Initiative, DRPT will develop a consolidated Virginia-wide transportation GTFS directory, including a trip-planning widget. The Department will also assist local agencies with support to create and improve their transit data feeds. The GTFS Webinar held on February 5, 2021, provided agencies with an overview of the new DRPT-led effort.
For RM3P, this initiative will support improved data quality and access, which the program can leverage in its mission to improve mobility in Northern Virginia. As part of the RM3P Data-Exchange Platform (DEP), the original plans called for establishing interfaces with each individual transit agency for the purpose of capturing GTFS-formatted data. However, it would be more advantageous and less costly for the DEP to be able to connect to a single GTFS repository encapsulating all of the transit data in Northern Virginia. DRPT’s new statewide GTFS initiative offers the opportunity to do just that. Now, transit agencies, Northern Virginia commuters, and RM3P will all benefit!
For questions, contact us at RM3P@vdot.virginia.gov.