Roundup · Agency IT
July 2026 roundup: open-loop fares, the NTD's new rules, and MDS 2.1
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.
A monthly scan of what actually moved on the data and technology layer of transportation. This edition runs from roughly mid-June to mid-July 2026: a wave of open-loop fare launches timed to the World Cup, a quiet but structural change in what the National Transit Database collects, the next version of the Mobility Data Specification going to preview, and the first agentic-AI products aimed squarely at transit operations.
Open-loop fare payment arrives on a World Cup deadline
Los Angeles Metro switched on contactless open-loop payment, so riders can now tap a credit or debit card, phone, or watch directly at fare gates and on buses. Until now a TAP card was the only way to pay, and Metro rolled the change out ahead of the FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, the events that put its fare system under a hard deadline.
Kansas City moved the same month, in the other direction on fares themselves. KCATA brought bus fares back on June 1 after several years of free rides, and did it as a cashless, tap-to-pay-only system. RideKC pairs it with automated fare capping, so a rider who taps the same card stops paying once they hit $4.00 a day, $20.00 a week, or $62.50 a month.
The real change here is in the back office rather than the reader on the bus. Open-loop moves fare logic to an account-based system that settles bank-card taps and applies caps after the fact, which is also why the GTFS schedule spec recently added a field to flag when a feed’s service accepts contactless bank cards. Expect more of these through the fall as agencies race the same mega-event calendar.
The National Transit Database quietly changes what it collects
Less visible, and arguably more structural, the FTA’s reporting changes for report years 2025 and 2026 add two things worth an operator’s attention. Agencies now report cybersecurity events to the NTD, and the database begins collecting GTFS shapefile data alongside annual submissions to improve route and trip-planning information. Data collection for the 2025 report year closes in mid-July 2026, with the annual data products due out in October.
The shapefile change is the tell. The NTD report an agency files and the GTFS feed it already publishes are starting to converge, which is a small but real step toward one canonical description of a system’s service instead of two that drift apart.
MDS 2.1 goes to preview
The Open Mobility Foundation previewed the next version of the Mobility Data Specification, MDS 2.1. It is not released yet, so this is a look ahead rather than a launch. The additions track where shared mobility is going: a new endpoint for crashes and incidents, fuller support for goods delivery including sidewalk robots, and clearer handling of robotaxis and other autonomous for-hire vehicles. OMF says MDS is now in use across more than 1,200 cities and 200 operators, so even a point release moves a lot of integrations.
The same desk also published a read on digital-curb infrastructure out of Montréal, a reminder that the curb is becoming its own data problem, with its own specification next to MDS.
AI shows up in the agency software stack
Two signals landed close together. Optibus announced what it calls the first AI agent built specifically for transit operations, covering planning, scheduling, dispatch, and real-time work. Read the “first” as marketing and the direction as real: agentic AI is being productized for the software agencies already run.
On the more grounded side, APTA released an AI and machine-learning primer with guidance briefs that documents deployments already in service, from predictive maintenance on the MTA’s bus fleet to camera-based bus-lane enforcement at AC Transit. The primer is the more useful artifact, because it separates what agencies have actually put into production from what vendors are pitching.
On the calendar
Two on-lane gatherings are worth a hold. MobilityData’s International Mobility Data Summit is in Montréal on September 22-23, the room where the GTFS and GBFS specs get argued in person, and MOVE America follows in Detroit the week after. Both are on our events calendar.
A note on shelf life: these are mid-July 2026 snapshots. MDS 2.1 is still in preview, a vendor “first” is a claim and not a fact, and fare rollouts slip. The direction each item points is steadier than any single date here.