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Independent reporting and explainers for the people who publish, integrate, specify, and govern mobility data.
Read the lead briefing12entries
Current desk
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Transit agencies are running machine learning in production today, but not in the places the marketing points to. Here is what the working deployments have in common, and why the ones that stall usually stall on data rather than on models.
Read the briefingAgency ITRoundup
What moved on the transportation data layer from mid-June to mid-July 2026: World Cup open-loop fare launches, new National Transit Database reporting rules, MDS 2.1 in preview, and AI landing in agency software.
Feeds & StandardsExplainer
GTFS is the open format that puts transit schedules into your maps app. Here is what a feed contains, how its files join together, and why it became the default for transit data worldwide.
Feeds & StandardsExplainer
GTFS-Realtime is the standard for live transit data: what a feed carries, how Protocol Buffers structure it, and why the quality rests on the systems behind it.
InteroperabilityExplainer
Intelligent transportation systems is a broad label that hides a precise idea. Here is what ITS covers, the architecture that holds it together, and why it is really a data-exchange problem.
InteroperabilityExplainer
Transit signal priority lets a late bus ask a traffic signal for a few more seconds of green. Here is the request-to-grant message chain, how it differs from emergency preemption, and how NTCIP 1211 lets mixed-vendor buses and controllers interoperate.
Data PlatformsExplainer
Mobility as a service promised one app to plan, book, and pay for every trip on a subscription. The flagship consumer bundle went bankrupt. Here is what the idea got right, what it got wrong, and which pieces survived.
Quality & ComplianceExplainer
Three buses arriving nose to tail is not bad luck. It is a feedback loop in frequent service, where a late bus falls further behind and the one behind it catches up. Here is the mechanism, why agencies measure headway instead of schedule, and what they do about it.
Quality & ComplianceExplainer
A ghost bus is a prediction with no vehicle behind it. Here is how a transit app generates one, the four ways it happens, and how Chicago drove its rate down.
Feeds & StandardsExplainer
The countdown on the sign is a prediction, not a readout of a bus you can see. Here is the data chain behind it, from the vehicle's GPS to the feed the sign reads, and the three ways agencies turn location into a time.
Quality & ComplianceExplainer
The NTD is the federal record of US public transit: who rides, what it costs, and who has to report. Here is what it holds, who files it, and how to pull the numbers yourself.
Agency ITExplainer
Agencies are moving fare logic off the card and into a back office. Here is what account-based ticketing, fare capping, and open-loop payment each mean, and which agencies have made the switch.
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