A CONSORTIUM APPROACH TO TRANSIT DATA INTEROPERABILITY

This report by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) examines the barriers to transit data interoperability in the United States and proposes a multistakeholder consortium to develop industry-wide data standards. The authors argue that interoperable data is essential for 'mobility as a service' (MaaS), which allows users to seamlessly combine various transportation modes. The report identifies significant market potential for improved data sharing and provides a detailed set of minimum data requirements for transportation service providers (TSPs) to enable a complete multimodal user experience.

• The potential market opportunity for improved transit data interoperability in the U.S. is estimated to be between $3 billion and $6 billion, with the potential to increase ridership by 5 to 10 percent.
• Five primary barriers hinder data interoperability: poor quality and incomplete data, a lack of data standardization, nascent technology and design, misaligned incentives, and inadequate public engagement.
• While standards like the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) and General Bikeshare Feed Specification (GBFS) exist, they are often incomplete or not universally adopted. For example, GTFS-RT lacks fields for real-time vehicle capacity, and many TNCs use custom APIs that limit data sharing to protect competitive advantages.
• The report proposes a cross-industry consortium to address global-scale challenges, specifically data standardization and technology/design barriers, as single stakeholders often lack the incentive or expertise to create industry-wide solutions.
• Immediate, local-scale improvements can be made without a consortium, such as transit agencies improving the quality of static GTFS feeds, bikeshare operators adopting GBFS, and municipalities promoting existing transit tools to the public.
• The document establishes a comprehensive set of minimum data requirements across six categories—Location, Service, Station, Payment, Booking, and Identification—to ensure users can make informed decisions about multimodal routing.

APA

CRANE, J., & RUCKS, G. (2016). A CONSORTIUM APPROACH TO TRANSIT DATA INTEROPERABILITY. RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/03/consortium_approach_to_ITD_report2016.pdf

Chicago

CRANE, JACKSON, and GREG RUCKS. A CONSORTIUM APPROACH TO TRANSIT DATA INTEROPERABILITY. RMI, 2016. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/03/consortium_approach_to_ITD_report2016.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=CRANE |first1=JACKSON |last2=RUCKS |first2=GREG |title=A CONSORTIUM APPROACH TO TRANSIT DATA INTEROPERABILITY |publisher=RMI |date=December 2016 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/03/consortium_approach_to_ITD_report2016.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{crane2016consortium, author = {CRANE, JACKSON and RUCKS, GREG}, title = {{A CONSORTIUM APPROACH TO TRANSIT DATA INTEROPERABILITY}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2016}, month = dec, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/03/consortium_approach_to_ITD_report2016.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }