The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) recently launched an ambitious mission to develop a National Transit Map, which is missing from the National Spatial Data Infrastructure.
Creating a National Transit Map will mean creating a single map to show all routes, stops and schedules for every transit agency nationwide
USDOT is asking transit agencies to let DOT collect General Transit Feed Specification data from their websites periodically to ensure up-to-date routing and schedule data on the National Transit Map.
All transit agencies that want to join the National Transit Map initiative must register all of their data under the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), a branch of USDOT. The agencies must also agree with the standard terms of use. To sign up or get more information, go to http://gis.rita.dot.gov/Transit.
USDOT has scheduled March 31 as the first collection day for the initiative. On that day, BTS will download and start to integrate all of the data sets from the various participating transit agencies.
The first draft of the map is scheduled to be released later this year.
