TransLoc, a transportation technology provider debuted its newest product, Architect, a free and easy-to-use web application for managing and sharing transit data in General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format. This launch follows a successful beta-testing period with 20 participating transit agencies selected from a pool of 150 applicants.

As the standard format for public transportation data, GTFS plays an integral role in the transit-rider relationship. GTFS helps agencies — and ultimately riders — by syncing data, such as schedules, route shapes and transit stop details and amenities, with third-party applications. Without GTFS, an agency’s transit data is unavailable via web or mobile applications like TransLoc Rider, Google Transit or Apple Maps; riders rely on these apps to display transit routes and schedules, or to track transit fleets in real-time.

TransLoc Architect is a free web application designed to help transit agencies efficiently manage GTFS, a time and resource–intensive process for agencies of all sizes. By enabling agencies to easily create and update their GTFS feeds in an intuitive map-based viewer, the product makes maintaining clean, error-free GTFS information simple, while improving on outdated software and vastly improving efficiency over time-intensive manual methods.

The creation and maintenance of GTFS has typically required some level of technical expertise or expensive software, but Architect tackles a complex, laborious process with a visual, intuitive platform that anyone could use, from layperson to expert.