What if you could get route
information via SMS?
What if you could get the schedule
for a bus stop via Twitter?
What if you could embed ETS
schedule information on your own
site?
We could come up with dozens of
great ideas for new and interesting
ways to access ETS information.
There are two main problems:
1. ETS has limited resources, and
they simply can’t build everything.
2. Screen-scraping the ETS site is
error-prone and time consuming.
Starting today, Edmonton Transit is
making its route and schedule data
available for free in the Google
Transit Feed Specification (GTFS)
format.
GTFS is an open format for describing
public transportation schedules and
associated geographic data.
ETS is the 29th transit authority in the
world to make their data publicly
available in the GTFS format.
Edmonton is the 2nd in Canada (after
York in Ontario).
Where can you get the GTFS data for
ETS?
http://www.edmonton.ca/transportation/ets-data-for-developers.aspx
http://code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/wiki/PublicFeeds
For some added incentive, there’s
going to be a programming
competition.
Submit your app/mashup that makes
use of the ETS GTFS data, and you
could win!
Details to come at:
http://www.transitcampedmonton.ca
Three prizes (so far):
1. 6 months of free transit
2. 4 months of free transit
3. 2 months of free transit
Stay tuned for more information!
Check out the website, download the
GTFS data, and build something cool
and useful.
This is a step in the right direction
for the City of Edmonton.
Open cities are the future!