Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA)

What changed since the last check

• Correctness no change
• Freshness down 1.7
• Rider experience no change
• Realtime quality no change

Top three things to fix

1. Check with your AVL vendor that every vehicle assignment flows into TripUpdates, including school-day and tripper runs.

   134 of 134 trips scheduled during the sampling window had no live predictions. Riders on those trips get schedule data dressed up as realtime. Caltrans expects every operating trip in TripUpdates.

   Effort: A vendor data-mapping question.

   Agencies here usually clear this within about 1 week (based on 84 observed fixes).

2. Set wheelchair_boarding to 1 (accessible) or 2 (not accessible) for every stop. A field survey can start with the busiest stops.

   2949 of 2949 stops don't say whether a wheelchair user can board there. Riders who use wheelchairs can't plan a trip when accessibility is marked 'unknown'; apps show no information at all.

   Effort: A column in stops.txt; your scheduling software likely has it.

3. Set wheelchair_accessible on every trip (most small-agency fleets are 100% accessible, so this is often a single default).

   5435 of 5435 trips don't say whether the vehicle is wheelchair accessible. Even with accessible stops, riders need to know the bus itself can take them.

   Effort: Often one default setting in your export.

   Agencies here usually clear this within about 1 week (based on 5 observed fixes).

NTD certification readiness: Ready

Published at a public URL, valid, and current: the three things the NTD GTFS requirement asks of a feed all hold here. Only your own D-10 certification makes that official; this is a heads-up, not a determination.

Published Ready

Published at a public URL.

Valid Ready

Passes validation with no errors.

Current Ready

Service data covers the next 60 days.

agency_id and NTD ID: Not aligned. Your feed's agency_id is COTA; your National Transit Database ID is 50016. A feed that serves several agencies (a shared regional feed) can legitimately carry more than one agency_id, so a difference here is a heads-up, not an error. Optionally set the agency_id for your service to 50016 in agency.txt (and the matching agency_id in routes.txt) so the feed lines up with your NTD record. It is a convenience, not a required feed change: FTA also links agency_id to your NTD ID on your P-50 form.

Key facts

Feed URL

http://www.cota.com/data/cota.gtfs.zip

Last checked

2026-07-09

Service window

59 days of service data remain. Last service date 2026-09-06.

Feed version

2026-MAY-04-BB_20260630

State

Ohio