Open Government Data and Public Transportation

Governments are increasingly making public transportation data available to the public on the Internet. The data can be used to explore and characterize current and historical service levels or to forecast operations in the immediate future. This paper considers, as an example, real-time bus location data provided by the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency. General techniques for making use of such data to benefit both providers and users of public transportation are described. There is a brief discussion of why the advantages of making data available often outweigh the disadvantages.