TIDES Fundamentals

Question 1

What is TIDES?

Answer 1

Transit Integrated Data Exchange Specification - a data specification for accessing, managing, and using transit operations data

Question 2

What does TIDES stand for?

Answer 2

Transit Integrated Data Exchange Specification

Question 3

What types of data does TIDES cover?

Answer 3

Vehicle location data, passenger count data, and fare transaction data

Question 4

How do transit agencies benefit from TIDES?

Answer 4

TIDES simplifies data access and offers industry best practice tools to:
- improve data quality
- integrate data sources, and
- create reports and tools needed to plan and manage service

Question 5

How do consultants, researchers, and partners benefit from TIDES?

Answer 5

TIDES simplifies access to agency data and allows creation of standard reports and tools across agencies and data sets

Question 6

How do ITS vendors benefit from TIDES?

Answer 6

TIDES makes it easier to give customers access to their data and allows them to use the data in more ways

Question 7

What standards is TIDES based on?

Answer 7

Frictionless Data standards for data packages and table schemas

Question 8

What is the relationship between TIDES and GTFS?

Answer 8

TIDES references GTFS IDs (like stop_id, trip_id) and extends transit data beyond schedules to include operational data

Question 9

What is the purpose of TIDES?

Answer 9

To free transit data (from proprietary formats, vendor-specific systems, or siloed databases) and provide more options to turn operations data into information on ridership, passenger loads, fare revenue, vehicle speed and delay, service reliability, and more

Question 10

Is TIDES open-source?

Answer 10

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

Question 11

What research is TIDES based on?

Answer 11

TIDES is based on research conducted by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) under the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP)

Question 12

What file format does TIDES use for data?

Answer 12

CSV (Comma-Separated Values) files with a datapackage.json metadata file

Question 13

What is the governance model for TIDES?

Answer 13

TIDES is governed by a Board of Directors with management provided by a TIDES Manager (currently MobilityData)

Question 14

What is the license for the TIDES specification?

Answer 14

Apache License 2.0 (code) and Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (sample data, specification, and documentation)

Question 15

What are the three main categories of TIDES data?

Answer 15

Event Data, Summary Data, and Supporting Data