After an organized campaign from public groups, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) is finally going to post transit data—train and bus schedule info—online. The move will allow third-parties such as Google Transit to make the data available to riders. Greater Greater Washington has been the following the story and has a good write up.

The story also made the front page of The Washington Post on Friday:

Metro plans to post all its bus and rail schedules and routes on the transit agency’s Web site starting Monday, a long-awaited move that will allow third parties such as Google Transit to use the data to offer online tools to help riders navigate the system.

Riders on the New York and San Francisco subway systems have access to such tools. In San Francisco, for example, two college students used rail schedule data from BART to create a free application (iBART) that riders can install on their iPhones to plan trips, said Timothy Moore, BART’s webmaster. “It’s super popular,” he said. “With no in-house developer to create new applications, and in a time of extremely tight budgets, this is a great way to foster new services that directly benefit customers.”