Central Ohio Transit Metrics

Website by Ohio State's Center for Urban and Regional Analysis
February 2022

Center for Urban and Regional Analysis (CURA)   (Columbus)

To improve community access to primary data, CURA used their special expertise on general Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data structures and protocol buffers to make use of schedule data and real-time vehicle location data from the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA). COTA previously did not maintain a historical achive of the data, but CURA worked with COTA to retrieve and archive COTA's public data since January 2018. 

The data are accessible to users in two websites: 1) depicts the delays in the transit network and 2) models the scheuled and actual accessibility provided by the network. 

COTA has used the tools informally from time to time to explore and understand anomalies in their services, including sever delay events and service disruptions resulting from high-congestion events. The tools motivate and support ongoing research involving transit service equity. They also help maintain the data and research sharing relatinoship between CURA and both the planning and data departments at COTA.