The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) was created through a public-private partnership between TriMet of Portland, Oregon and Google. GTFS establishes a standardized way to organize transit service information into easily shareable open datasets. With a shared "language" like GTFS, any transit agency can make their data available for online trip planners (like Google Maps) to integrate into their apps so people can see transit options among trip results. The establishment of GTFS has led to the proliferation of many GTFS-based trip planning applications and other web tools, making transit more accessible and understandable for riders around the globe.

Where GTFS is headed

As of 2019, OpenMobilityData cites that there are over 400 publicly available GTFS feeds in the United States alone. More agencies and state DOTs are adopting GTFS and making their data publicly available every year. The number of small and rural agencies that have adopted GTFS is also growing, and the specification continues to accommodate more and more uses thanks to its active community of industry stakeholders.

Third party developers have taken advantage of GTFS's status as an open data standard to make their own bespoke modifications to data, powering tools and services beyond trip planning apps. Some examples include:

• CAD/AVL and scheduling systems

• GIS mapping and data visualization

• HTML timetables on a transit website

• Interactive maps

Some more tenured GTFS-enabled transit agencies are now employing extension data like Fares v2 to integrate fare data in their payment systems. Others have made improvements to their data with accessibility in mind, whether through the inclusion of text-to-speech data or wayfinding information with the Pathways extension. The industry is also seeing more demand-responsive transportation services being encoded with GTFS-Flex.

Perhaps the most impactful addition to GTFS so far has been the inclusion of a realtime extension, allowing agencies to provide realtime trip information. Many riders are now benefiting from live updates of arrival times and other alerts from their local transit agency thanks to this addition to the spec.

The future is bright for GTFS as its continues to evolve, finding more ways to improve the transit rider experience.