The U.S. Department of Transit has released its first ever National Transit Map.
"The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) today released National Transit Map data, a geospatial database containing the information submitted by almost 200 transit agencies that provides open, machine-readable data about their stops, routes, and schedules," according to a press release from BTS.
The national, openly available map of fixed-guideway and fixed-route transit service in America will allow the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to demonstrate the importance and role of transit in American society and to identify and address gaps in access to public transportation. It will also support research, planning and analysis on the benefits of transit, such as the economic impacts of transit on a community’s economic development, or on reducing poverty in low-income neighborhoods.
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx also penned a blog post for the occasion, including a call for action to fill in some of the gaps in the map.
We have work still to do to ensure that each transit agency has this kind of data so we can make sure the Map represents all transit service. We're taking an iterative approach to building this important asset, and we are looking forward to demonstrating progress in future releases.
The idea for the National Transit Map was announced back in March, and between that time and now, the team behind the map gathered data from 270 transit agencies to map "nearky [sic] 400,000 stops and stations on nearly 10,000 routes."
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