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TIDES

TIDES (the Transit Integrated Data Exchange Specification) is your key to accessing, managing, and using transit operations data.

Why TIDES?

TIDES is a data specification for transit operations data including vehicle locations, passenger counts, and fare transactions.

  • For transit agencies, TIDES simplifies and unifies your historical operational data, allowing you to improve data quality, integrate data sources, and create the reports and tools you need to plan and manage service, including use cases like National Transit Database reporting and on-time performance analysis.
  • For consultants, researchers, and partners, TIDES simplifies access to transit operational data and allows creation of standard reports and tools across agencies and data sets.
  • For national, state, and regional bodies, TIDES enables collecting granular, standardized data from transit providers throughout your jurisdiction, streamlining reporting and unlocking new analysis capabilities without burdensome overhead.
  • For ITS system vendors, TIDES makes it easier to give your customers access to their data and allows them to use the data in more ways.

TIDES frees your transit data and gives you more options to turn operations data into information on ridership, passenger loads, fare revenue, vehicle speed and delay, service reliability, and more!

TIDES is open-source, free for use, and is community governed, developed and supported.

Specification Information

For full TIDES specification documentation, see Architecture, with detailed table schemas under Data Table Schemas.

Getting Started and Resources

Getting Started has information for organizations or individuals seeking to start a new TIDES implementation. See Resources for implementation guidance, information on existing implementations, sample data, and more.

Acknowledgment

The data schemas and tools documented here are based on the results of research conducted by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) under the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP). This research is available at the National Academies website.

Note that neither the TIDES Project nor the TIDES-transit repository are associated with TCRP, TRB, or the Academies. The use of the TCRP research results in this repository do not reflect any explicit or implicit endorsement of or participation in this work by the Academies. In addition, the opinions and conclusions expressed or implied in the research are those of the contractor. They are not necessarily those of the Transportation Research Board, the Academies, or the program sponsors.