MTA Appears Willing to Work With Web Developers…Finally

Over the past year the NYC MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) has been going after Web developers who use schedule data to create applications to help public transportation passengers make better use of the system. As a railfan, I’ve always found this policy absurd. Google has been able to get access to this same data set since the launch of their Google Maps with subway directions last year and HopStop has the data as well.

Michael Grynbaum from the NY Times has a great story today about the progress that’s been made with the MTA in opening up the schedule data. Complaints against two web developers have been dropped. Grynbaum discusses how a variety of cities across the U.S. share their schedule and transit data with the public. Up north, Toronto held a “transit camp” in 2007 to help create a better TTC website.

At the end of the column, there’s a comment from Internet law expert Jonathan Zittrain who noted, “I love that the subversive act of the 21st century in the subway is not graffiti, but mapping out the stations so you can know where to exit the car. Twenty years ago they would have been tagging the cars. In both cases, the city is upset.”

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has talked about his ideas for Media2020, a program that is supposed to make NYC more competitive in media and to create more entrepreneurial growth. Bloomberg’s ads for his supposed transit plan appear all over the Web and on TV — embracing the developer and entrepreneurial communities would make for a much stronger transit system.

Let’s hope that all transit systems across the world embrace technology to make travel easier. Maybe then we will see more cool visualizations of transit usage,  more apps like Exit Strategy,  and more mashups that track trains and their travels. I’d also love to see a transit camp here in NYC as long as the MTA participates as well. In my travels as a rail fan, it’s amazing to learn how much knowledge rail fans hold that could make the system better for passengers – imagine bringing together those who know  the system best, the best developers and entrepreneurs and the government to create the next generation of transit here in NYC.