Event
OPTA Small Operators Summit 2027
OPTA's summit for small urban and rural Ohio transit operators, held at the Salt Fork State Park Lodge in eastern Ohio.
The Ohio Public Transit Association holds its Small Operators Summit, which OPTA also calls the SOS Conference, March 22-24, 2027 at the Salt Fork State Park Lodge and Conference Center in eastern Ohio. It is aimed at managers and staff of small urban and rural Ohio transit systems, along with ODOT Office of Transit staff. Neither a session program nor a dedicated event page had been posted at the time of checking.
Why it matters for the data layer
Small operator meetings are where the practical limits of transit data work become visible. Who actually maintains the GTFS when nobody’s job title says so. What a two-person IT shop can support after the grant that bought the software runs out. Which shared statewide tools get adopted and which get ignored because they assume staff the agency does not have.
That is a different conversation from the one at the general-audience state conference, and it is closer to how most transit data in the country actually gets produced. Worth covering separately.