The four agencies Trillium has helped join Google Transit — (three in Humboldt), and then Rio Vista Delta Breeze in the SF Bay Area — have all chosen to make their data feeds public. I think that’s great.

One other factor in making feeds public besides agency choice that is worth pointing out is that some software and service providers have license agreements that lock transit data from being freely shared (I guess because it would make it easy to switch to another vendor’s product). My clients own their own data.

I hope other vendors take this approach because it’s the best thing for public transportation. I say let’s try to grow the whole public transportation pie (as a market for us, and with it’s benefits for communities and riders) rather than jealously guard slices of it.