Welcome to LA Metro's developer site!
There are three things we hope to achieve in this site. The first is to gather all of our public datasets, data-feeds, and programming interfaces into one place. We've started with a handful, and you can expect that the number of datasets will grow as people within the agency discover our effort.
The second thing we hope to do is provide a resource for everyone who wants to use our datasets. We will be providing initial documentation as well as a place for you to post comments and notes. If you've ever used the documentation at php.net you'll know what I'm talking about. We hope to expand on their example by providing occasional tutorials and by drawing attention to outstanding work from the community.
The third and biggest idea is to grow a community for users of this data. We're using a system that's deeply infused with all the idealism of web 2.0. What's your idea of Flickr for users of transportation data? Let us know what features of the social web you are missing and we'll see what we can do!
Based on the interest we've received so far our developer site is as good for developers outside the agency as well as inside. It gives us all a central place to access the data as well as a single place to maintain and document the datasets. People within the agency who have been providing one-offs of these datasets are thrilled (and relieved) by our project.
Please have a look around and let us know what you think!
-Douglas Goodwin
Developer for LA Metro's Deptartment of Creative Services
Comments on this entry:
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June 25, 2009
I just discovered this on the main site and I'm impressed--and excited! Even if this just leads to LA transit being available through Google Transit, this is a worthwhile effort. Also I noticed the plug in the FAQ for a Django-based application so good to know there is someone there who likes Python :)
I'm brainstorming some ideas for things to do with this data; I was just yesterday thinking of how to make something for tracking little gotchas in connecting transit that make it harder to get places because the schedule doesn't line up well. I'll have to think of ways to identify meaningful ones that are preventing people from using public transit.
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June 25, 2009
I kept reading the blog and found out that the frontend is in Django, which I told a friend/coworker of mine. He said, and I echo his sentiment, that "this is a use of tax dollars I can get behind!" :)
