If your agency receives FTA Section 5311 (rural) or Section 5307 (urban) formula funding and reports to the National Transit Database, NTD requires a public, accurate GTFS feed for your fixed-route service — and Report Year 2026 is when the newest technical requirements land for reduced, rural and tribal reporters. Here's exactly what's required, and the fastest way to get there.
agency_id linked to NTD IDshapes.txt included — record it by driving the route with the app, or draw itIf your agency is an NTD reporter — which generally means you receive FTA Urbanized Area (5307) or Rural Area (5311) formula funding — and you operate any fixed-route service, including deviated fixed-route, then yes: NTD requires you to publish a public, web-hosted static GTFS feed and certify annually, as part of your NTD reporting package, that it's accurate and up to date.
agency_id field cross-walked to your NTD ID (matching your P-50 form)shapes.txt file — the actual route-line geometry, not just stops
FTA finalized new NTD reporting changes in a July 2025 Federal Register notice. Two technical additions
to the GTFS requirement — the agency_id/NTD ID cross-walk and the shapes.txt
requirement — took effect for full reporters in Report Year 2025, and take effect for
reduced, rural and tribal reporters in Report Year 2026. If your agency reports on that
schedule, this is the reporting year it applies to you.
It is not just the agencies that never built a feed. We checked FTA's own published RY2023 GTFS link file on 1 October 2026: of 777 rural, tribal and reduced fixed-route reporters, 292 had reported no public feed link at all, and of the 485 that had, 84 links did not return a GTFS file when checked (not found, a web page instead of a feed, or a server that refused the request) and 98 feeds carried expired calendars. Only 303 — fewer than four in ten — had a working, current feed that day. A feed that was fine at reporting time and has quietly lapsed is the most common way to fall out of compliance.
Stops and routes are straightforward to list in a spreadsheet. shapes.txt is different —
it's the actual line your vehicle drives, point by point, which normally means separate GIS software most
one- or two-person transit offices don't have lying around. Hand-built spreadsheet feeds routinely miss it
or fail validation on the first attempt, because drawing accurate route geometry isn't really a
spreadsheet task.
This is exactly the part AddTransit is built to remove, two ways, both included in the
$15 per route per month GTFS plan. Drive it: open the
AddTransit driver app on a phone, choose “travel along
route”, and drive the route once — the app records the actual GPS path, point by point, as a
shape in your account; back in the GTFS Editor you attach that shape to the trip, and it goes out in
your feed as shapes.txt. No GIS, and the shape matches the road your bus really takes. Or draw it: the GTFS Editor's built-in route/shape editor
lets you draw the route on a map, or import it, instead of hand-plotting coordinates in a separate
GIS tool. AddTransit generates a valid shapes.txt from that route, validates
the whole feed against the GTFS spec, and hosts it live for $15 per route per month,
no setup fee to start. If your NTD deadline is close and you'd rather send us your timetable and have
it built for you, the Setup-as-a-Service Basic package ($199) covers exactly
that: import, build, validate and publish, done in about 45 minutes of our time.
If your regional MPO or transit association already builds and hosts a GTFS feed that covers your service, you're likely already covered — this page is about making sure a feed that meets the RY2026 technical bar (agency_id + shapes) genuinely exists and is public, not a sales pitch that you need to buy software to satisfy a legal requirement.
Want to check your existing feed instead of starting from scratch? Our GTFS validation guide walks through the same checks NTD inspections look for.
Do it yourself — free to start. Build your routes, stops, schedule and shapes in the AddTransit GTFS Editor. Hosting and publishing to Google Maps and other GTFS consumers runs on the standard $15/route/month plan once you're ready to publish.
Create a free accountDone for you — from $199. Send your timetable and route list; we import, build, validate and publish a compliant feed, fixed price and scope agreed before we start.
See setup packagesNational RTAP's Community Rides grant (up to $75,000 per Section 5311 agency; the 2027 round closes October 23, 2026) has funded GTFS and online trip-planning work before. If you are applying, you can paste this into your application:
[Agency] will engage a GTFS hosting provider to build a validated, shape-bearing GTFS feed for its fixed-route service, host it at a public URL for NTD reporting, register it with Google Maps and Apple Maps, and monitor calendar expiry. Budget: one-off setup $199–$499 plus hosting and monitoring at $15 per route per month.
Need a quote on letterhead for the application? Email support@addtransit.com with your agency name and number of routes and we send one the same or next business day.
Keep it. Send us the file and we host it at a stable URL, watch the calendar so you hear from us before it expires, and register it with Google and Apple Maps — $15 per route per month, no setup fee for a valid feed. Your state DOT gets the URL for the NTD report; nothing else changes.
Sources: FTA Federal Register notice 2025-12813 (published July 10, 2025) and the FTA NTD Recent Developments FAQ. State-DOT reporting per the FTA Reduced Reporting Policy Manual. This page is informational and is not legal advice — confirm your agency's specific reporting obligations with your NTD analyst.
