TransitCamp Edmonton: Data for Developers

By Mack D. Male ·

I’ve been looking forward to this presentation for a long time! As you may know, I’ve been one of the more vocal citizens asking for an API or data dump from Edmonton Transit. I think only positive things will result from giving everyone access to the data! ETS simply doesn’t have the resources to build interfaces for the iPhone, SMS, etc., so releasing the data would enable other people to build them instead!

Today at TransitCamp Edmonton, I’m pleased to share with you that ETS has become the 2nd transit authority in Canada (and 29th in the world) to release their route and schedule information for free in the GTFS format!

Here are the slides from my presentation:

TransitCamp Edmonton: Data For Developers

The ETS GTFS data is about 16 MB compressed and 177 MB uncompressed, so it’s quite a bit of data. If you’re looking for some help getting started, I’d suggest checking out the googletransitdatafeed project and the timetablepublisher project.

We’re also going to be holding a programming competition, as a little extra incentive for you to build something cool and useful with the data. So far we’ve got three prizes: 6 months of free transit for first place, 4 months for second place, and 2 months for third place (to clarify: that’s 6 months for the team, not for each individual on the team). I don’t have all the details yet, but stay tuned. I’ll be posting more information on the TransitCamp site (and here).

I think this is fantastic. Open cities are the future, and this is a big step in the right direction for the City of Edmonton.

  • http://www.ZoomJer.com Jerry Aulenbach

    Sad that I missed TransitCamp today. I was really looking forward to it. While I certainly won’t be programming any of this stuff, I think that there are great possibilities as an end user and for placing it on my website. Looking forward to it! Was the mystery of this LRT train revealed today? http://www.twitpic.com/68aqx

    -Jerry

  • Grant

    Oh sweet. I was hoping this was the kind of announcement you were talking about… I’m sorry I missed it, but you know how hard I’ve been pulling for something like this, and you know I’ll be entering the app contest if I have the time… I look forward to hearing more about that!

  • http://blog.predictabuy.com Eric Fredine

    That’s very cool. Nice job helping to get them across the line.

  • http://grantneufeld.ca/ Grant Neufeld

    Thanks for posting the slides. I used them in putting together the video of your presentation:
    http://www.viddler.com/explore/grantneufeld/videos/14/

    I don’t know when I’ll get to the rest of the videos I shot at TransitCamp. I got over 3 hours of footage. Do you know if any of the other presenters will share their slides, or if you can arrange for me to get a copy? Thanks.

  • http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/06/08/recap-transitcamp-edmonton/ Recap: TransitCamp Edmonton at MasterMaq’s Blog

    [...] the high tech buses. Brendan Van Alstine led a discussion about TRUE. I shared my presentation on Data for Developers – software developers, not land developers! Councillor Iveson finished the day off talking about [...]

  • http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/06/13/foundations-for-an-open-edmonton/ Foundations for an Open Edmonton at MasterMaq’s Blog

    [...] the meantime, Edmonton has already made some data available – a Google Transit data feed – and some other examples include London’s mySociety. Also, be sure to read Vancouver’s Open [...]

  • http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2009/06/14/recap-barcampedmonton2/ Recap: BarCampEdmonton2 at MasterMaq’s Blog

    [...] discussion about open cities, and second at 2pm, where I talked about Edmonton Transit’s recent Data for Developers announcement. Some of the other sessions included: The Perfect User Experience by Peter, New [...]

  • http://codytorgerson.com Cody Torgerson

    http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/06/dump-pump-with-new-transit-agencies-in.html

    It says that Calgary has also done the same and yet I cannot find it on the linked page. Do you know if Calgary is involved too?

    I would like to blog about it and link to your post if I can.

  • http://blog.mastermaq.ca Mack D. Male

    Hmm that’s the first I have heard about Calgary releasing GTFS data…if I find it, I’ll let you know.

  • http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/01/08/edmonton-transit-in-2009/ Edmonton Transit in 2009 at MasterMaq's Blog

    [...] 05/30: TransitCamp Edmonton: Data for Developers [...]

  • http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2010/01/13/open-data-comes-to-edmonton/ Open Data comes to Edmonton at MasterMaq's Blog

    [...] planning, which made use of a GTFS feed provided by ETS. At TransitCamp Edmonton on May 30, 2009, that data was made available to local developers. I led a discussion about open data a couple of weeks later at BarCampEdmonton2, on June 13, 2009. [...]

  • http://www.ideaowl.com/blog/?p=214 Summary: Unique Apps of the #Apps4Edmonton (an #OpenData) Competition – Ideas Worth Sharing

    [...] [...]

  • http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2011/01/07/edmonton-transit-ets-now-offers-schedule-information-via-sms-text-messaging/ Edmonton Transit (ETS) now offers schedule information via SMS text messaging at MasterMaq's Blog

    [...] information for free (standard messaging rates may apply). The service is yet another example of the GTFS feed that ETS released in 2009 paying [...]