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Pathways Studio

A clearer path through every station.

Pathways Studio turns station layouts into accurate GTFS Pathways data, so trip planners can show entrances, step-free routes, and realistic transfer times.

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Trip to

Community Health Clinic

PMPM
38 min total+10 min delay
PHASE 1Walk to Central Station2 min · 320 ft
Head northeast on Main Street, then west on 1st Avenue to the West accessible entrance.
PHASE 2Inside Central Station~4 min · 195 ft · step-free
  1. Accessible entrance
    Enter at West portico
    Auto-doors · ramp grade 1:20
  2. Elevator down
    Elevator WC-1 to mezzanine
    ~30 secVerified step-free
  3. Fare gate · wide lane
    Tap your transit card
    Gate WC-1 · wheelchair-wide$2.50
  4. Turn right · follow signs
    Follow accessible-route signs for:
    MMetroTTram
    32 ft to next decision
  5. Direction split · accessible
    Take Eastbound via accessible corridor
    M1Eastbound
    Bypasses escalator-only route140 ft
  6. Elevator down
    Elevator WC-2 to platform
    ~25 secMarked with wheelchair icon
PHASE 3Board M1 Eastbound4 stops · 4 min
M1 Eastbound to Eastside Terminal
Central Station
Scheduled
Expected
up to +10 min
Ride to Midtown Station4 stops
Arrive at Community Health Clinic
3:42 PM est. · 9 min walk (curb cuts & ramps)
PMPM
35 min total+10 min delay
PHASE 1Walk to Central Station1 min · 225 ft
Head northeast, then right on sidewalk to the Main Street entrance.
PHASE 2Inside Central Station~2 min · 175 ft
  1. Entrance
    Enter at Main Street
    West corner, near bike racks
  2. Stairs down
    Take stairs to mezzanine
    14 steps~12 secNo elevator on this stretch
  3. Fare gate
    Tap your transit card
    Gate bank B · any lane$2.50
  4. Turn right · follow signs
    Right at the corridor, follow signs for:
    MMetroTTram
    26 ft to next decision
  5. Direction split
    Take Eastbound — not Westbound
    M1Eastbound
    To Eastside Terminal120 ft
  6. Escalator down
    Down to platform
    ~18 secElevator alt. available
PHASE 3Board M1 Eastbound4 stops · 4 min
M1 Eastbound to Eastside Terminal
Central Station
Scheduled
Expected
up to +10 min
Ride to Midtown Station4 stops
Arrive at Community Health Clinic
3:39 PM est. · 8 min walk from Midtown Station
PMPM
37 min total+10 min delay
PHASE 1Walk to Bus 23 stop~30 sec · 50 ft
Cross to the Maple & 1st bus stop, directly opposite.
PHASE 2Ride Bus 23 to Central3 stops · 5 min
Bus 23 Northbound
Maple & 1st Avenue
Scheduled
Expected
On time
Ride to Central Station bus bay3 stops
PHASE 3Inside Central Station~1 min · 80 ft
  1. Bus bay exit
    Exit at Door BB-3, follow signs to M1
    Direct connection · same building
  2. Fare gate · transfer
    Tap your transit card
    Gate bank EBus transfer credit applies
  3. Escalator down
    Quick down to M1 platform
    ~10 secElevator alt. available
PHASE 4Board M1 Eastbound4 stops · 4 min
M1 Eastbound to Eastside Terminal
Central Station
Scheduled
Expected
up to +10 min
Ride to Midtown Station4 stops
Arrive at Community Health Clinic
3:41 PM est. · 4 min via covered walkway

Walking directions derived from the transit agency's GTFS Pathways feed (v2.4).

What riders see today, without it

A wheelchair user maps a trip to a 9 a.m. medical appointment. The trip planner shows a three-minute transfer. The actual transfer is eleven minutes: a long concourse, two elevators, and a level change the planner has never known about. She leaves twenty minutes early, every time, because the information she needs has never been in the feed.

Multiply that across every wheelchair user, blind or low-vision rider, older adult, parent with a stroller, and visitor in your service area. The information they need exists. It just isn’t published.

What changes when you publish Pathways

The same rider opens the same app. The route now uses the C Street entrance, not the main one, because C Street has an elevator and the route the app suggested before did not. The transfer reads eleven minutes. The walking directions name the entrances and signs she’ll see overhead. She arrives on time.

Disabled riders are not the only ones who benefit:

  • Transfer estimates stop being generic five-minute guesses.
  • Wayfinding directions use the same entrance names the signs use.
  • Visitors with luggage find escalators before stairs.
  • Riders running late see the closer entrance.

These benefits arrive as soon as your feed is published. Google Maps, the Transit app, and other planners that consume GTFS Pathways pick the data up automatically.

Why most agencies haven’t done this yet

Modeling a station traditionally means weeks of in-station surveys, spreadsheets of pathway IDs, brittle naming conventions, and validation cycles that surface errors long after they’re easy to fix. For a system with dozens of stations, the project never starts.

Some of the largest transit systems in North America invested significant resources in manually building Pathways data. We worked on some of those projects, and learned which parts of that work are worth automating and which still require human judgment. Pathways Studio is what we built from that: a faster way to model station pathways accurately.

A floorplan-first workflow

Use the drawings you already have. Upload a station floorplan, align it to the real-world map, and calibrate its scale with a single known measurement. Every stop you place on the diagram gets latitude and longitude automatically.

  1. Place entrances, platforms, boarding areas, and connector nodes on the floorplan.
  2. Draw pathways between them. Same-level lengths come from the calibrated scale.
  3. Add mode, direction, traversal time, stair count, slope, width, and the signage text riders will see in their app.
  4. Model elevators, escalators, stairs, and ramps as first-class pathways. Use parallel pathways for stairs-or-elevator choices.
  5. Run station reports that surface isolated nodes, missing accessible routes, orphaned platforms, and pathway fields you forgot to fill in. The same report becomes the punch list for your next field visit.

Field visits don’t disappear. They change shape. Your team walks the station to confirm signs, elevator behavior, gate operations, widths, and the things a drawing can’t tell you, then goes home. The hours you used to spend documenting in the station are the hours the floorplan workflow gives back.

Built for how data teams actually ship

  • Organization accounts

    Admin and editor roles.

  • GTFS feed import

    Start from what you already maintain.

  • Conflict-safe updates

    When the base feed changes, careful station modeling isn't lost the next time the schedule is republished.

  • MobilityData GTFS Validator

    A one-click quality gate.

  • OpenTripPlanner reachability tests

    Confirm an accessible route from a nearby origin to a platform actually routes, before you publish.

  • Full GTFS export or pathways-only package

    Fit your existing publishing process.

Pathways is no longer experimental.

Some of the largest and most rider-centric agencies have shipped it. Google Maps and the Transit app consume it. State data guidelines increasingly expect it. For an accessibility coordinator who has been asked, year after year, when the agency will publish Pathways data, the answer can stop being “not yet.”

There is a CFO argument as well. Some riders who currently depend on paratransit would choose fixed-route if they could trust the accessibility information in their trip planner. Right now, they can’t, not because the infrastructure isn’t there, but because the data describing it isn’t in the feed. Where that gap closes, demand shifts. Unit costs on paratransit run an order of magnitude higher than fixed-route; even modest modal shift moves the number.

The full capability set.

Ten capability areas, from feed import to validated export. Read the list, or jump to the one you came for.

01

Data import and feed management

  • Import an existing GTFS feed from a ZIP or individual text and CSV files. Routes, trips, stops, stop times, shapes, calendars, fares, translations, levels, pathways, transfers, areas, and networks are all covered.
  • File-level progress, imported record counts, and warnings on unrecognized files.
  • Working versions of the feed, so changes can be reviewed before they go live.
02

Team access

  • Organization-based accounts with secure login, password reset, and email confirmation.
  • Invite users, resend invitations, activate or deactivate accounts.
  • Administrator and editor roles.
Invite agency staff and assign Pathways Studio admin or editor roles.
03

Floorplan-based station modeling

  • Upload a floorplan per level. Pan, zoom, and search across the diagram.
  • Calibrate scale by drawing one measurement line and entering its real-world length in meters.
  • Place entrances, platforms, boarding areas, generic nodes, and child stops directly on the floorplan. Drag to move them.
  • Edit stop names, IDs, location type, parent station, wheelchair boarding status, platform code, and coordinates without leaving the diagram.
  • Apply naming conventions to keep stop and pathway IDs consistent.
  • Remove a stop from the diagram without deleting it from the feed.
Place entrances, platforms, boarding areas, and connector nodes directly on the station floorplan.
04

Georeferencing

  • Align a station floorplan to the real-world map.
  • Derive latitude and longitude for stops placed on the floorplan automatically, so coordinates don’t have to be entered by hand.
Align a station floorplan to real-world imagery, then save the georeferenced position.
05

Pathway editing

  • Mode options: walkway, stairs, moving walkway, escalator, elevator, fare gate, and exit gate.
  • One-way or bidirectional travel, with directional arrows on the diagram.
  • Traversal time, length, stair count, minimum width, and maximum slope.
  • Forward and reverse signage text that flows through to rider-facing apps.
  • Multiple parallel pathways between the same pair of stops, for cases like stairs-or-elevator.
Edit pathway mode, direction, traversal metrics, and signposted text while keeping the diagram in view.
06

Multi-level stations

  • Levels with IDs, names, and ordering.
  • Cross-level pathways for elevators, escalators, stairs, and ramps as first-class objects.
  • Same-level pathway lengths calculated automatically from the calibrated floorplan.
Model stairs, elevators, escalators, and ramps as first-class cross-level pathways.
07

Station quality reports

  • Inventory by stop type, pathway type, level, and directionality.
  • Coordinate and GPS presence checks.
  • Isolated nodes, orphaned platforms, and incorrect parent relationships.
  • Entrance-to-platform, platform-to-platform, and platform-to-exit connectivity.
  • Accessible and step-free route availability across the station.
  • Duplicate IDs, naming convention violations, and missing pathway fields.
  • Open any affected stop or pathway directly from the report, fix it, and rebuild.
Run station reports that turn isolated nodes, route gaps, and missing fields into a review list.
08

Conflict-safe updates

  • Compare uploaded levels.txt, stops.txt, and pathways.txt against the current version.
  • Review additions, modifications, removals, and conflicts side-by-side.
  • Approve or reject changes individually, or approve in bulk, before applying.
09

Validation and journey testing

  • One-click MobilityData GTFS Validator with errors, warnings, and informational notices.
  • Validation history.
  • OpenTripPlanner reachability tests from nearby geocoded origins to station stops, with expected duration, distance, and wheelchair access.
  • Preflight checks that catch issues likely to break OTP graph building before the test runs.
Confirm that entrance-to-platform routes are reachable, timed, and wheelchair accessible before publishing.
10

Export

  • Full GTFS feed export, or a pathways-only package containing the key files.
  • Export warnings and file inventory before you publish.
Export a full feed or pathways-only package, then run validation checks before publishing.

Start with one station

Pick a busy transfer station. Model it, validate it, publish it. Watch it appear in the apps your riders already use.

Request a demo