The 2008 Transit Data Are Here!

The Antiplanner is a data junkie. When the Federal Transit Administration publishes each year’s National Transit Database, I feel like running down the street like Steve Martin in The Jerk: “The 2008 Transit Database is here! And I’m in it!” (I did, after all, ride the Washington Metro more than a few times in 2008.)

As in previous years, the 2008 database comes in two very different formats: the database and the data tables. Both are self-extracting exe files (if, like the Antiplanner, you have a Macintosh, you may need a special program such as File Juicer to extract the data). Each has more-or-less the same data, but the data tables are easier to read while the database is easier to manipulate in an Excel spreadsheet.

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