About FTGIS

Transit agencies have a major need for planning data that are often spatial in nature. While various sources of spatial data are in existent, they have not been integrated and are often difficult for transit agencies to use effectively. The Florida Transit Geographic Information Systems (FTGIS) was developed as a one-stop shop for planning-related GIS data for Florida’s 26 fixed-route transit systems. Together with INTDAS, FTGIS was first developed as a stand-alone desktop GIS system using ESRI’s MapObjects developer library and the system is still available for download. The current version of FTGIS is a stand-alone server-based application developed using ESRI’s powerful ArcGIS Server.

FTGIS provides a comprehensive set of GIS functions that range from the very basic mapping functions to highly specialized applications that are customized for transit planning. FTGIS currently supports the following GIS functions:

Map Viewing. It allows maps to be zoomed in, zoomed out, panned, zoomed to the extent of all layers, and zoomed to the extent of the current layer.
Map and Layer Properties. It allows customized map background color, line color, line width, and line style.
Map Legend. It includes an ArcView-like map legend, which allows the users to choose which layers to display and in what order the layers are to be displayed.
Map Labeling. It includes a set of functions to display labels based on a selected variable. The user can change the text color, font type, font size, location, and style.
Map Queries. It includes the usual Identity function to retrieve data for a specific spatial unit and a Find function to search for spatial units containing a search text.
Map Select. It allows the users to select spatial units by point, line, circle, rectangle, and polygon. Selected items can be saved to a new data layer.
Thematic Map. It includes a set of functions for creating different thematic maps.
Map Charting. It allows the users to create pie and bar charts on the map based on one or more data attributes.
Map Editing. It allows the users to edit point and line shapes. The editing functions include delete a line or a point, move a line or a point, and insert a point.
Data Editing: It allows the users to modify the data for a selected feature.
Buffer Zone Analysis. It allows the users to perform buffer zone analysis for either selected features of a layer or for a whole layer.
Table. It allows the user to view the tabulated data for all records or selected records only. Selected data can be exported to an Excel or a text file.
Applications: Including (1) to query, retrieve, and analyze Florida’s transit stop inventories; (2) to identify transit service areas based on the TCQSM method and a transit propensity method; (3) to identify potential intersections for transit signal priority (TSP) implementation; and (4) to demonstrate potential applications of Automatic Passenger Counter (APC) data.
Miscellaneous other features. Other features include map tips, map printing, add or delete layer, etc.

A major feature of FTGIS is that it comes with ready-to-use data for each of the 26 fixed-route transit systems in Florida. The system currently includes the following GIS shapefiles for each transit system: county, street, transit route, transit stop, census tract, census blockgroup, census block, census TAZ, water, and park.