My name is Biju Nair, and I am reaching out on behalf of strada360, the team behind GTFS Lens, an AI-powered transit data platform built to help transit agencies explore, understand, and improve the quality of their GTFS feeds.
We have been long-time advocates of open, high-quality transit data, and we have tremendous respect for the work MobilityData does in stewarding the GTFS specification and advancing tools like the Canonical GTFS Validator. That shared mission is precisely why we are writing to you today.
What is GTFS Lens?
GTFS Lens gives transit agencies five distinct lenses through which to view and understand their data, each designed to make the feed tangible and accessible to staff at every level of technical expertise.
• Calendar View - A visual, day-by-day calendar that surfaces exactly which services are active on any given date. Agencies can immediately see service gaps, holiday exceptions, and seasonal variations without opening a single CSV file.
• Timetable View - A rendered representation of how printed or digital timetables would look based on the underlying GTFS data. Staff can query timetables by service type, calendar date, or route, making it easy to verify that the data matches what is published to riders.
• Map View - Routes rendered on an interactive map using the shapes defined in the feed. Users can filter by calendar date, service type, or route ID to see exactly which paths are active and how they align geographically.
• Stop View - A stop-centric perspective on the network. For any given stop, agencies can see every route that serves it, along with passing times, ideal for validating stop assignments and identifying missing or incorrect stop-time data.
• Stop & Ask AI - A conversational query interface that lets agency staff ask plain-language questions about their feed; no SQL expertise or data engineering background required. Whether it's a planner checking frequency patterns or an operations manager confirming a schedule change, answers come directly from the agency's own GTFS data in seconds.
Together, these five views transform a feed from a collection of flat files into a living, navigable picture of an agency's service, effectively acting as a visual validator, allowing staff to see and confirm what their data actually represents before it ever reaches a rider-facing application.
GTFS Lens is available at no charge, and you are welcome to explore the application yourself at
https://gtfs-lens.strada360.com.
How GTFS Lens and the Canonical GTFS Validator Work Together
We see GTFS Lens as a natural complement to the Canonical GTFS Validator. While the Validator identifies structural errors and specification violations in a feed, GTFS Lens allows agencies to go one step further to actually read and interrogate their data in context, surfacing real-world inconsistencies that may not trigger a validation rule but still degrade the rider experience. Together, these tools form a powerful, end-to-end data quality workflow:
- Validate - Use the Canonical GTFS Validator to catch 'specification' non-conformance's and structural errors.
- Explore - Use GTFS Lens to query the feed using different views and understand what the data actually says about service patterns, stop coverage, and schedule reliability.
- Improve - Armed with both validation reports and natural language insights, agency data teams can make targeted, confident corrections before publishing their feeds.
This combination lowers the barrier for smaller agencies, often the ones with the least technical capacity and the greatest need for data quality support, to engage meaningfully with their own GTFS data.
Our Request
We would love the opportunity to work with MobilityData to make GTFS Lens known to transit agencies. Specifically, we would welcome:
• A mention or feature in your agency-facing communications, newsletters, or resource directories.
• An introduction to agencies currently working through data quality improvement programs.
• Any feedback from your technical team on how GTFS Lens can better align with your data quality initiatives.
My name is Biju Nair, and I am reaching out on behalf of strada360, the team behind GTFS Lens, an AI-powered transit data platform built to help transit agencies explore, understand, and improve the quality of their GTFS feeds.
We have been long-time advocates of open, high-quality transit data, and we have tremendous respect for the work MobilityData does in stewarding the GTFS specification and advancing tools like the Canonical GTFS Validator. That shared mission is precisely why we are writing to you today.
What is GTFS Lens?
GTFS Lens gives transit agencies five distinct lenses through which to view and understand their data, each designed to make the feed tangible and accessible to staff at every level of technical expertise.
• Calendar View - A visual, day-by-day calendar that surfaces exactly which services are active on any given date. Agencies can immediately see service gaps, holiday exceptions, and seasonal variations without opening a single CSV file.
• Timetable View - A rendered representation of how printed or digital timetables would look based on the underlying GTFS data. Staff can query timetables by service type, calendar date, or route, making it easy to verify that the data matches what is published to riders.
• Map View - Routes rendered on an interactive map using the shapes defined in the feed. Users can filter by calendar date, service type, or route ID to see exactly which paths are active and how they align geographically.
• Stop View - A stop-centric perspective on the network. For any given stop, agencies can see every route that serves it, along with passing times, ideal for validating stop assignments and identifying missing or incorrect stop-time data.
• Stop & Ask AI - A conversational query interface that lets agency staff ask plain-language questions about their feed; no SQL expertise or data engineering background required. Whether it's a planner checking frequency patterns or an operations manager confirming a schedule change, answers come directly from the agency's own GTFS data in seconds.
Together, these five views transform a feed from a collection of flat files into a living, navigable picture of an agency's service, effectively acting as a visual validator, allowing staff to see and confirm what their data actually represents before it ever reaches a rider-facing application.
GTFS Lens is available at no charge, and you are welcome to explore the application yourself at
https://gtfs-lens.strada360.com.
How GTFS Lens and the Canonical GTFS Validator Work Together
We see GTFS Lens as a natural complement to the Canonical GTFS Validator. While the Validator identifies structural errors and specification violations in a feed, GTFS Lens allows agencies to go one step further to actually read and interrogate their data in context, surfacing real-world inconsistencies that may not trigger a validation rule but still degrade the rider experience. Together, these tools form a powerful, end-to-end data quality workflow:
This combination lowers the barrier for smaller agencies, often the ones with the least technical capacity and the greatest need for data quality support, to engage meaningfully with their own GTFS data.
Our Request
We would love the opportunity to work with MobilityData to make GTFS Lens known to transit agencies. Specifically, we would welcome:
• A mention or feature in your agency-facing communications, newsletters, or resource directories.
• An introduction to agencies currently working through data quality improvement programs.
• Any feedback from your technical team on how GTFS Lens can better align with your data quality initiatives.