Open Data Needs Champions
If you’ve spent any time on a subway platform or at a bus stop lately, you may have witnessed one of the great success stories of open government data.
All of those people checking the arrival and departure times of trains, trolleys and buses are consuming applications built with open transit data.
It’s a great example of how open data has changed (and continues to change) the way we use public transit, and the role of transit agencies in developing consumer-facing applications.
There is a really interesting post over on the Google “Policy by the Numbers” blog that examines some of the reasons that open transit data has had such a dramatic impact in places where it has been embraced (h/t to O’Reilly Media’s Alex Howard for the link).