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12/3/2019
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has integrated real-time rail information into the Apple Maps mobile application, the agency announced last week.
WMATA riders using Apple Maps now will see detailed train schedules, live departure and arrival times and current train and bus locations.
“The introduction of real-time data on Apple Maps — and soon other services — is a game-changer that will improve trip planning and give riders new visibility on the exact location of their train or bus,” said WMATA General Manager Paul Wiedefeld in a press release. “We want to make choosing [WMATA] as simple and convenient as possible, and a key element of success will be providing real-time transit information as broadly as possible.”
To make data available, WMATA opened a general transit feed specification real time (GTFS-RT) data feed to selected major mapping services and to all registered third-party developers. The data will make trip planning through the services more accurate and enable developers to integrate live train and bus information in new and innovative ways, WMATA officials said.
Previously, WMATA released rail and bus schedules through application programming interfaces (API) in 2010, followed by GTFS scheduled data in 2011. In 2016, the authority also released a real-time API feed that shows the live location of trains throughout its 117-mile Metrorail system.