TransitScreen, a Washington, DC-based software company providing a real-time mobility information platform, launched a new open data initiative in collaboration with the non-profit MobilityData. The organizations formed OpenMobilityData to accelerate the creation and sharing of global public transit, urban transportation, and shared-mobility data.

"Data drives transportation more than ever before, and cities and transit agencies globally need a platform for sharing data with the private sector, app developers, and the public," said Gabe Klein, partner at Cityfi and former commissioner of Chicago and DC's departments of transportation.

OpenMobilityData has acquired TransitFeeds, the most popular mobility data commons, from its creator, Quentin Zervaas. TransitFeeds serves 6 million data requests annually for nearly 1,000 transit data feeds from 39 countries. It is the only site that supports both the GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification, originally created by TriMet and Google) and GTFS-Realtime data standards.

OpenMobilityData will be the first data commons to fully integrate with transit data editors to update data automatically. Launch partners include TransLoc Architect, GTFS Manager from Trillium Solutions, and GTFS Editor from Conveyal.