INTDAS: An Integrated National Transit Database Analysis System

Agencies rely on various sources of data to help plan, manage, and improve transit facilities and services. Examples of these data include the National Transit Database (NTD) from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), socioeconomic data from the Census Bureau and planning agencies, transit route data from transit agencies, land use data from county tax appraisal offices, etc. Although such data are generally available for transit planning, they are not easily accessible to transit planners. To remove the data barrier, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) Public Transit Office decided to develop a user-friendly information system called the Florida Transit Information System (FTIS). The system integrates various data sources into a common data depository and provides customized functions for easy data retrieval and analysis. The current system consists of two major components: (1) INTDAS (Integrated National Transit Database Analysis System), and (2) FTGIS (Florida Transit Geographic Information System). INTDAS is designed to retrieve and analyze the National Transit Database (NTD)—a uniform data set required by the FTA as a prerequisite for the nation's transit systems to receive FTA grant funds. The current INTDAS database combines the 1984-2000 NTD data for all transit systems reported to the NTD program. The system provides customized tools for easy data retrieval, visualization, analysis, and transfer. FTGIS, on the other hand, is a stand-alone GIS system developed using ESRI’s MapObjects 2.0 library. The system is customized for easy access to several bundled GIS shape files pertaining to Florida's transit systems. It also includes a comprehensive set of GIS functions ranging from basic zoom-in and zoom-out operations to highly customized buffer zone analysis. This paper will introduce the system architecture, the data integration process, and the various database and GIS functions developed for the system.