How Boston’s Changing the Way People Experience Transit

And why picking one app is good for commuters everywhere

Yesterday, Boston’s MBTA announced that after a competitive bidding process, the selection committee has unanimously endorsed us as their recommended transit app. We are honored to have won. We also think it’s worth explaining what led to this partnership, and why we think it’s a smart initiative — not the choosing us part but the decision to endorse a single app, period.

But first, a little context:

Do you remember how people planned transit trips before smartphones and public transit apps? Before Google Transit existed?

It was painful.

If you were lucky, your transit agency might have had a clunky trip planning tool on their website. If not, you’d gather a bunch of route maps and timetables, and try to figure out the best connections.

How people navigated transit until a decade ago

This is not ancient history. This is as recent as 2005. Which is long after drivers had graduated from Rand McNally maps to GPS and online driving platforms like Google Maps, MapQuest and Yahoo Directions.

So what changed? Thankfully, Portland’s transit agency, TriMet, understood the need and collaborated with Google to help them launch their first transit trip planner in 2005. This was when GTFS, the data standard that powers most public transit apps (including ours!), was born.

But TriMet wasn’t the only agency that recognized how technology could improve the public transit experience. On the other side of the continent, the MBTA was setting a strong example with their own innovative projects:

They opened their GTFS data when other large agencies were still sending developers cease-and-desist letters. And before the other guys had even caught on, they were releasing real-time data to developers and helping create the GTFS-RT standard for real-time transit information.

They were the first transit agency to launch mobile ticketing for commuter rail way back in 2012.

They deployed a powerful service alert platform that easily integrates with the third-party apps that customers use, and automates a lot of their dispatchers’ work. Riders get regular notifications for all disruptions, similar to the way you’re informed about flight delays and cancellations through airline apps.

Transit App will send users a notification for disruptions on their line

It’s no surprise then that the MBTA became one of the most influential voices shaping agency best practices for delivering customer information. Today, the standard they helped create looks something like this:

Step 1:

Release as much data as you can to developers in standard well-documented formats; make it easily accessible; maintain it religiously; and regularly invest to improve it.

WMATA’s Developer Page (Washington D.C)

Step 2:

Recognize that building or buying your own mobile app — whether in addition to releasing data or instead of it (yikes!) — is at best, a waste of resources when technology companies are doing it better for free; and at worst, a disservice to riders who are then funnelled to a subpar app.