Our History

In 2006, TriMet (Portland, Oregon, USA) and Google created the GTFS Schedule data format, which quickly had tremendous success world wide, and which has been extended in 2011 with its GTFS Realtime counterpart.

In the early 2010s, the data format started to splinter due to a lack for synchronisation in the community, with GTFS+ (by MTC), NTFS (by Kisio), the MBTA’s flavor, the NY MTA’s flavor…

In 2015, the GTFS community started a project hosted by the Rocky Mountain Institute, aiming to realign the GTFS community and practice by consolidating the diverging practices.

In 2018, at the end of the project, the GTFS community:

• Published the GTFS Best Practices, endorsed by the members of the working group; and,
• Identified the need to preserve the new industry wide momentum of collaboration, potentially by formalizing it.

In April 2019, the non-profit MobilityData was established in Montréal, Canada with an international Board of Directors (Canada, US & Europe), opened the membership in October 2019, and staffed with an internal team of transit enthusiasts.

In June 2019, MobilityData was selected by NABSA, the owner of the GBFS data format created in 2014, to replicate its approach refined in the public transit industry into the shared mobility industry.