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Introducing transit service change repository

written by andy on

transit.wiki or transitunlimited.org has been up for almost 10 years highlighting transit routes and locations served by transit. Originally the wiki covered the San Francisco Bay Area agencies but it has been expanded to cover the entire western US. My hope is that it would cover the entire US someday.

One of the challenges with expansion is the need to keep to date with transit information as service changes over time. I try very hard to keep information current for major transit agencies, but there needs to be better tools to keep up.

Many transit agencies perform service changes at regular intervals up to 3 or 4 times a year. Due to federal laws and labor agreements, planners propose changes a few months ahead, conduct public hearings, perform federally mandated analyses, seek board approvals, and implement these changes at regularly scheduled driver sign-ups.

It is a lot of work, but the agencies do not present service change information the same way. Some of them put the information on a blog style web site and keep it permanently. Many put them on a single service change page where the information will be replaced for the next change. Some of them put in PDFs as part of a news release. Often times the information is hard to find once the change is implemented. You have to go to the Internet Archive to look for it.

We have good repositories for schedule and route info in GTFS format, with such sites as transitfeeds.com. You can not only find the current info but past data from years past.

While you can check and see the changes by comparing information between versions, it is not as easy as to check the service change materials. Also the service change materials often present why they are changing routes and schedules.

The wiki has expanded to become a repository for the changes. Pages can be added to the wiki to include the source material from the agency about the service changes. Once it is saved, it stays.

https://www.transit.wiki/About:AC_Transit

There’s also a calendar that highlights the past and upcoming service changes among all the agencies.

https://www.transit.wiki/Service_change_calendar

This help keeps me informed with changes that may need updates on the wiki, such as route changes, new routes, and route discontinuations.

For you, this information can provide insights of why things changed, may that be due to ridership or changes in funding.


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