How To Participate

The National Transit Map (NTM) is an openly available map of fixed-guideway and fixed-route transit service in America that allows the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to demonstrate the importance and role of transit in American society and to identify and address gaps in access to public transportation. It supports research, planning and analysis on the benefits of transit.

To build this important geospatial asset, USDOT is leveraging data that transit agencies already make available to the public. Transit agencies use their existing Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Federal Access Control and Entry System (FACES) accounts to provide a link to their General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data. USDOT is not requiring transit agencies to produce any new GTFS or stop, route, and schedule data. Rather, transit agencies that already provide this information as open data will be able to participate with little effort. 

By registering their data, agencies authorize USDOT to use the data. To allow the use of the data, transit agencies must grant the USDOT a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States (CC-BY-3.0) license.  The license gives USDOT the right to access and use the agency's transit data periodically. FTA transmits these links to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS). 

BTS collects the data and combines them by pulling the data feeds, extracting data from the GTFS feeds, and translating and loading the data to the National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD). BTS develops and publishes NTM updates to NTAD several times a year. The National Transit Map acknowledges the authorizing entities in the dataset metadata (Agencies, Routes, Stops) per the latest NTAD update.

For additional information, see the FAQs on how to participate or email NationalTransitMap@dot.gov.