Welcome to the National Center for Transit Research (NCTR) at the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) Transit GIS Clearinghouse website.

The purpose of the Clearinghouse website is to be a first stop for all things transit and GIS. The Clearinghouse will highlight the growing needs and opportunities available to transit GIS professionals and provide resources to assist transit agencies to become more efficient and responsive.

The Clearinghouse will provide four major areas of assistance:

Photo courtesy of www.seefloridago.com

1) Resources and Training: The Clearinghouse will host live net conferences, a bi-annual national transit GIS conference, and a transit GIS listserv, which will serve as a forum for professionals to share and consult with their peers and assist with GIS tasks and planning.  In addition, the Clearinghouse will provide a searchable inventory of reports and studies from such institutions as the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies.

2) Data: To help control the costs of acquiring and managing data, the Clearinghouse will assist GIS newcomers by providing tutorials for accessing large datasets.

3) Techniques and Models: This section of the Clearinghouse will support GIS users by providing them with tools to conduct GIS analysis. Best practices for collecting, managing, and analyzing transit specific data will be made available. Some examples include data models for bus stop inventories and transit routes.

4) Analysis: The Clearinghouse will also create a series of white papers to examine the cutting edge and controversial issues surrounding transit GIS.  Some potential topics are as follows: identifying GIS standards for transit; transit planning using the new dataset from the Longitudinal Employment Household Dynamics from the  U.S. Census; integrating automatic passenger counters with transit planning; identification of bus rapid transit corridors; open source GIS mapping opportunities for transit GIS; and examining the legal issues surrounding remotely sensed data.

The website is designed and updated by the CUTR GIS team headed by Martin Catala and Martin Akerman. The GIS team consists of Jeanette Achillich and Christopher Cochran.

We hope the Clearinghouse website addresses your transit needs and we look forward to your suggestions/comments.