What is metro.net/developer?
metro.net/developer is our new technical resource site meant to attract a community of developers, and serve as a gateway to web services. We wish to develop relationships with all developers inside and outside the agency.
Why are you doing this?
These data have always been available to the public, but this is the first time everything has been gathered into a single place. In addition to gathering the data, we have contributed documentation, code samples, and feedback mechanisms to enable developers to share solutions with one another. We’ll also be hosting developer weblogs, aggregated newsfeeds, and other community-building features.
Who is doing this?
metro.net/developer is an intra-agency effort. The site is being co-developed by the departments of Communications and Operations and the hope is that we foster open data and collaboration with our customers and interested parties.
Are you charging money for the data?
The data is FREE, though we require that users agree to our Terms and Conditions before using the data. You may also refer to Metro’s Privacy Policy and Comments Policy.
What will I find on metro.net/developer?
We offer both downloadable data sets and web services. The data differ in both substance and use. For example, the Trip Planner Information Feed is a suite of complementary web services that return data in two open and popular formats (XML and JSON); the GTFS data is published in an open format, and there is a growing body of open-source code available for working with GTFS data; the GIS data is published as ESRI Shapefiles. While not open, this format is widely used and many open-source tools are available to parse it.
How do I use the data?
The site is targeted at users with a background in code development. That said, we wish to make using the data as easy as possible.
Why does the site have a separate URL (ie: developer.metro.net)?
In addition to providing a website for a community of developers, Developer.metro.net provides special interfaces to Metro’s data. This is the first of Metro website with rational addressing designed to make it easier for everybody to find content.