public transit data on Walk Score

[Matt Lerner]

Matt from Walk Score here.  This morning we added public transit data from 40 cities to Walk Score and we'd love your feedback:
http://www.walkscore.com/get-score.php?street=san+francisco&go=Go

As you folks are well aware, there are a bunch of transit agencies that make their data available to Google but not to the public here:
http://code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/wiki/PublicFeeds

We are collecting signatures to petition transit agencies to open their data here:
http://www.walkscore.com/transit-feed.shtml

More info on our blog post:
http://blog.walkscore.com/?p=344

And thanks for all the great comments to Brandon about transit score.  We'd love to have your feedback at www.walkscore.org

Send any feedback my way...


--

Follow me: http://twitter.com/mrlerner

[Joe Hughes]

Congrats on the launch, Matt! It's great to see open transit data
appearing not just on your main site, but also all the sites that
syndicate Walk Score info.

I'm really happy to see the general open data petition; any plans to
give feedback, i.e. "125 other people in your area have also signed
this petition"?

Finally, can you talk more about the service you built for querying
transit service by location?

Cheers,
Joe

[Ian White]

Why can't google use its goodwill and goto those agencies providing to google but not others? I'm continually perplexed why nobody else seems to understand it's a bit hypocritical of google to bask in the glow of openness, but doesn't help agencies be open to anybody besides google.


==
Ian White :: Urban Mapping Inc
690 Fifth Street Suite 200 :: San Francisco CA 94107
T.415.946.8170 :: F.866.385.8266 :: urbanmapping.com/blog

[Tommy B Goode]

I think that's a bit strong for an organization that put out GTFS as
an open standard. They didn't have to do that. I have found them to be
very encouraging of open standards in general. At the same time, they
are a business, and they can't afford to be shut out simply because
they said no to being given the data privately and somebody else
signed on for that.

--
Tom Boutell

http://www.tommybgoode.com/
http://boutell.livejournal.com/

[Michael Smith]

If you work with transit agencies for a while you will see that these data issues are very political and bureaucratic. Expecting a private company to come in and convince a transit agency that it should take on additional responsibility is simply unrealistic. And believe me, many of us in industry have already spent a huge amount of effort trying to open things up. We have actually had a great deal of success. But for many agencies this is going to take a long, long time.

Mike

[Philip Ashlock]

Because of the aforementioned political and bureaucratic hurdles required to deal with opening data, it's important to heavily emphasize the incentives to be able to express open data as a major political and bureaucratic win for those on the inside who help push it forward.

While it's obvious to us that structured open data would produce efficiencies, cost savings, greater innovation, and a generally make everyone's life better, that is not the norm commonly understood within many city agencies. Additionally, many open data initiatives are expressed as all stick and no carrot so people on the inside often see opening data as an expensive legal liability that will make their lives more difficult. Because of this, it is important to heavily leverage the incentives for the city agencies and the politicians as well as for the citizens. The fundamental mantra for open data is that it allows government agencies to *do more with less*

Some of this is pointed out on http://nytransitdata.org/ but where I've really seen this play out is in the only three cities to have passed comprehensive open data laws:


The Portland resolution touches on this a few times:

WHEREAS, by sharing data freely, the City of Portland seeks to develop opportunities for economic development, commerce, increased investment, and civic engagement for Citizens of the Portland region; and

WHEREAS, publishing structured standardized data in machine readable formats creates new opportunities for information from different sources to be combined and visualized in new and unexpected ways, for niche markets to be identified and developed, and for Citizens to browse, interpret and draw attention to trends or issues with greater efficiency; and

WHEREAS the adoption of open standards improves transparency, access to public information, and improved coordination and efficiencies among bureaus and partner organizations across the public, non-profit and private sectors; and

The Vancouver city council motion has paid a lot more attention to cost savings up-front right at the beginning:

WHEREAS municipalities across Canada have an opportunity to dramatically lower their costs by collectively sharing and supporting software they use and create;

WHEREAS the total value of public data is maximized when provided for free or where necessary only a minimal cost of distribution;

WHEREAS when data is shared freely, citizens are enabled to use and re-purpose it to help create a more economically vibrant and environmentally sustainable city;

WHEREAS Vancouver needs to look for opportunities for creating economic activity and partnership with the creative tech sector;

WHEREAS the adoption of open standards improves transparency, access to city information by citizens and businesses and improved coordination and efficiencies across municipal boundaries and with federal and provincial partners;

Here San Fransisco also emphasizes the incentives:
http://www.sfmayor.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/ED-09-06-Open-Data.pdf

This new ease of access will lead to innovation in how residents interact with
government, resulting in social and economic benefits for the City.
The City and County of San Francisco will be able to engage our innovative high-tech workforce
by releasing data, a key component of San Francisco's future economic development.  By
providing government data that adheres to privacy and security policies, San Francisco's world
class technology community is given the platform from which to create useful civic tools, all at
no cost to City government. By bringing City data and San Francisco's entrepreneurs together, we
can effectively leverage existing resources to stimulate industry, create jobs and highlight San
Francisco’s creative culture and attractiveness as a place to live and work.  Finally, the City and
County of San Francisco's technology presence will begin to reflect that of our world class,
cutting edge private technology sector, and help us better engage the wealth of knowledge and
skills of our local community.

[Ian White]

But you miss the point—google has done the political dance to get agencies to participate and be ‘open.’ But only google gets to benefit from this as many agencies don’t make their data to other parties. Sure, we can sign petitions and things, but google has the leverage, not us.

 

 

==
Ian White :: Urban Mapping Inc

690 Fifth Street Suite 200 :: San Francisco CA 94107

T.415.946.8170 :: F.866.385.8266 :: urbanmapping.com/blog

 

[Tommy B Goode]

What do you want Google to do, exactly?

[Ian White]

Read my original post below

==
Ian White :: Urban Mapping Inc
690 Fifth Street Suite 200 :: San Francisco CA 94107
T.415.946.8170 :: F.866.385.8266 :: urbanmapping.com/blog


-----Original Message-----
From: transit-d...@googlegroups.com [mailto:transit-d...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tommy B Goode
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 4:20 PM
To: transit-d...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [transit-developers] Re: public transit data on Walk Score

What do you want Google to do, exactly?

On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 3:55 PM, Ian White <i...@urbanmapping.com> wrote:

> But you miss the point-google has done the political dance to get agencies

[Michael Smith]

Actually, the point I was trying to make is that Google doesn't have the leverage you would expect. Convincing transit agencies to change their ways is far harder then most people realize. And as far as I can tell, Google is already doing what they can to get agencies to release their data.

I believe the best leverage now is creating enough useful apps for transit agencies that have released their data so that agencies that haven't will be too embarrassed not to do the same.

Mike

[Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock]

Excerpts from Ian White's message of Thu Nov 05 15:55:00 -0500 2009:
> But you miss the point-google has done the political dance to get agencies to

> participate and be 'open.' But only google gets to benefit from this as many
> agencies don't make their data to other parties. Sure, we can sign petitions
> and things, but google has the leverage, not us.

I'm not sure that this is always the case. For example, in New York Google gets
data from the MTA but I don't think they are currently getting preferential
treatment. Their contract was FOIL'd
(http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=3195), and while the payments
section was redacted, I don't think Google is paying for data (at least, Google
has stated publicly that they aren't paying for "data"). I think they're paying
to use the subway symbols and other MTA trademarks. The MTA will send out
schedule data to anyone who submits a FOIL request, and to the best of my
knowledge, this is the same exact data that Google gets (e.g., it has the same
errors and oddities). The only preferential treatment Google could be getting
would be more frequent or regular updates. But that's unlikely to be the case
since Google transit still contains bus routes that ceased to exist last May.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Google take an actual stand on this. I just
don't think Google entering into private licensing agreements with transit
agencies is a sign that the agencies are being more "open." That is, I think
Google is more or less getting the same crummy deal that any of us could
currently get (at least in the case of New York).

In any case, I'm glad to see Walk Score advocating for increased access to
public transit data. I've been working with many others on a New York-based
campaign (http://nyransitdata.org) to get the MTA to open up its data and
engage the developer community in a positive manner. The legal threats have
stopped, but we've still got a long way to go before we have open transit data
in New York.

-Nick

P.S. If anyone is interested in getting GTFS data for NYC, a colleague of mine
has written a converter for the STIF files that the MTA mails out. We've posted
these GTFS files here: http://topplabs.org/data (no promises of course on their
accuracy or if they're completely up-to-date, though we know they're more
up-to-date than what Google Transit is using).

> From: transit-d...@googlegroups.com<mailto:transit-d...@googlegroups.com> [mailto:transit-d...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Joe Hughes
>
> Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 2:16 PM
>

> To: transit-d...@googlegroups.com<mailto:transit-d...@googlegroups.com>

>
> Subject: [transit-developers] Re: public transit data on Walk Score
>
>
>
>
>
> Congrats on the launch, Matt! It's great to see open transit data
>
> appearing not just on your main site, but also all the sites that
>
> syndicate Walk Score info.
>
>
>
> I'm really happy to see the general open data petition; any plans to
>
> give feedback, i.e. "125 other people in your area have also signed
>
> this petition"?
>
>
>
> Finally, can you talk more about the service you built for querying
>
> transit service by location?
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Joe
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Matt Lerner <mrle...@gmail.com><mailto:mrle...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Matt from Walk Score here. This morning we added public transit data from
>
> 40 cities to Walk Score and we'd love your feedback:
>
> http://www.walkscore.com/get-score.php?street=san+francisco&go=Go
>
>
>
> As you folks are well aware, there are a bunch of transit agencies that make
>
> their data available to Google but not to the public here:
>
> http://code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/wiki/PublicFeeds
>
>
>
> We are collecting signatures to petition transit agencies to open their data
>
> here:
>
> http://www.walkscore.com/transit-feed.shtml
>
>
>
> More info on our blog post:
>
> http://blog.walkscore.com/?p=344
>
>
>
> And thanks for all the great comments to Brandon about transit score. We'd
>

> love to have your feedback at www.walkscore.org<http://www.walkscore.org>

[David Turner]

On Thu, 2009-11-05 at 17:16 -0500, Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock wrote:
> But that's unlikely to be the case
> since Google transit still contains bus routes that ceased to exist
> last May.

And which are not in the latest data that we and Jehiah have from the
MTA.

[Jehiah Czebotar]

I want to echo the part about there being a lot of progress towards
open transit data across the industry.

gtfs-data-exchange recently passed the mark of collating gtfs data for
100 agencies (http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com/agencies). It might
seem small when you compare with the total number of agencies on
google transit worldwide (400+) but it really is a huge milestone and
momentum is gaining.

I am also aware of several large US transit agencies that are in the
process of developing developer resource centers, which is also a good
sign of progress.

--
Jehiah

[Joa]

This is not necessarily so. Agencies that skip commercial trip
planning products in favor of Google Transit have saved thousands in
capital investments and ongoing O&M.
I know of at least one agency that has acknowledged that in the past
and that, BTW, makes the GTFS data available to the public at no
charge.
As far as concise and "fashionably" open feeds are concerned, we would
be nowhere without the gravity of Google's brand name. And that
statement standing by itself would be unjust as it doesn't even
recognize the effort.