The Iowa Department of Transportation supports the creation and maintenance of GTFS for many transit agencies in Iowa. Several other transit agencies maintain GTFS outside of this effort. This website contains download links for all services with public GTFS in Iowa.

GTFS is an acronym for the General Transit Feed Specification. GTFS defines a common standard for public transportation schedules and associated geographic, fare, and service calendar information.  Learn more by reading the documentation for GTFS.

GTFS data is used in many applications that present public transportation information, such as  trip planners and maps. The data is also analyzed by transportation planners and researchers.

More information:

• The gtfs.org best practices page provides recommended practices for describing public transportation services in teh General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS).
• The gtfs-changes email list is a discussion forum regarding the GTFS and proposed modifications.
• The transit developers email list is a discussion forum for software development in the public transportation space.
• City-Go-Round is a directory of applications that provide access to transportation information, many of which utilize GTFS data.
• Transitfeeds.com provides download links for GTFS data for public transportation agencies worldwide.
• Documentation for the feeds published by Iowa DOT’s contractor Trillium Solutions, Inc. can be found here.

GTFS data includes files that contain geographic information that can be imported into and used in a variety of geospatial analysis platforms. There are several tools and websites available that allow one to convert these text files into more common geometry formats.

• Command line tools
  • TransitFeed Library contains several tools for working with GTFS files. One of which, KMLWriter, is great for quickly generating a KML file from a feed. 
• Web tools
  • Transit.land includes both a map to see, select, and export  routes and stops from GTFS files aggregated from around the world. Their API allows for querying and downloading of results.
• Geospatial analysis platforms
  • Plugins
    • Esri has a wide variety of tools and plugins that use GTFS data, including visualizing schedule data.
    • In QGIS, GTFS-GO and GTFS Loader allow you to visualize routes + stops within the platform.
  • Tutorials
    See the tutorials below for instructions on how to set up GTFS data in Microsoft Excel and visualize stop- and route-level daily frequencies in GIS programs without downloading any additional plugins or tools.
    • Setting up GTFS Data for GIS in Excel: Stop- and Route-Level Frequencies
    • Opening and Visualizing Stops.txt in QGIS
    • Opening and Visualizing Shapes.txt in QGIS

Download a ZIP archive (aggregate) of all public Iowa GTFS data using Iowa’s hosted GTFS Archive tool. Download the source code for gtfs-feed-archive on github.

Depending on the agency, the data linked on this website may be available through a license agreement or without a license agreement. Check individual agency websites or the feed download site for further information. Neither the Iowa Department of Transportation, nor its contractor (Trillium Solutions, Inc.), nor any transit agencies listed here guarantee the accuracy of any data linked from this website. Any and all data is provided as-is.

• GTFS data is provided without warranties.
• No availability guarantees are expressed or implied.
• The agencies retain full rights to the data.
• The agencies reserve the right to use their respective logos. 3rd party applications may NOT display agency logos without prior authorization. Unless otherwise specified, logos are an indicator only for official, agency-supplied materials.
• 3rd party applications should be presented as such. Unless other arrangements supercede, 3rd party applications should not be presented as being endorsed by, or affiliated with Iowa DOT or individual transit agencies.

If you have difficulty accessing GTFS data, have a question, or notice an error in a GTFS dataset, submit a support request (please note the location of the feed that your request concerns).