HeadwayThe product
The Transit Planning OS: one workspace for the planner's whole year
Every recurring deliverable in a planning team's calendar — the service analysis, the Title VI screen, the scenario comparison, the peer benchmark, the grant exhibit — runs from one pre-loaded workspace covering 17 data domains for every US agency. Each module reads the same source data, so the numbers in the map, memo, CSV, and board packet stay aligned. No data onboarding: open your agency and it's already analyzed.
Modules
Eight modules, one source of truth
These modules replace the tool stack most planning teams stitch together by hand — the spreadsheet headway math, the GIS equity joins, the separate access subscription, the Grants.gov alerts. Pick one to start; the rest are already populated with the same agency, routes, and assumptions.
| Module | What it does |
|---|---|
| Service Analysis | Trips per day, headways by time period, span, stop spacing, and route directness for every route, computed straight from the live GTFS feed — plus a scored health report that runs on a schedule and monitors the network against your agency's adopted service standards. This is the headway table you rebuild every pick, already built. |
| Reliability & Live Operations | GTFS-Realtime vehicle positions, trip updates, and occupancy show whether the scheduled network is being delivered — delay and on-time performance, crowding rollups, and feed-quality validation (Canonical GTFS Validator notice rollups, staleness checks) so analysis starts from data you trust. |
| Scenario Builder | Adjust frequency, change span, remove a route, or add a corridor — then read the before/after effect on service supply, vehicle revenue hours, cost proxy, and winners/losers by demographic group. The equity screen runs during design, not after the alignment is locked. |
| Equity & Title VI | FTA Circular 4702.1B implemented directly: minority and low-income route classification against the system average, disparate-impact and disproportionate-burden findings at your board-adopted threshold, per-scenario before/after comparison, and CSV plus board-ready PDF export with the methodology documented. |
| Access to Opportunity | An embedded R5 routing engine — the field-standard travel-time engine — computes isochrones and jobs, residents, and destinations reachable in 15, 30, and 45 minutes by transit and walking, with a built-in minority vs non-minority access split. No GIS license, no specialist queue. |
| Peer Benchmarking | Your agency against its NTD peer set — same urbanized area, same mode — on ridership, service supply, productivity, and operating cost, with national trend context. The standing answer to "how are we doing compared to similar agencies?" for boards and grant narratives. |
| Funding Intelligence | Grants.gov opportunities and USAspending FTA award history in one place: see every relevant NOFO as it posts, what peer agencies actually won and at what size, and program pages for 5307, 5311, 5339, and Low-No — so grant pursuit starts from evidence, not luck. |
| AI Knowledge & Exports | Ask plain-English questions over NOFOs, FTA circulars, and your own ingested planning documents and get answers with citations. Every module exports planner-ready CSVs, PDFs, and comparison tables, each traceable back to source data and vintages. |
How it fits together
How the modules connect
Every module reads from one network model built on the same GTFS, GTFS-Realtime, and reference data. When you change a route in the Scenario Builder, the equity classifications, service-supply totals, and exported tables recalculate from that single source — so the map, the memo, the CSV, and the board packet never disagree. That shared model is what lets one workspace replace the planning tool stack: the analysis that used to live in four products and a spreadsheet carries a question through the full decision cycle here.
Detect
Surface where the scheduled and delivered network is underperforming against service standards and peers.
Output: issue list
Diagnose
Work out why an issue is happening — span, frequency, reliability, coverage, or data quality — with the evidence attached.
Output: root-cause brief with confidence + sources
Model
Build and compare alternatives, and read the before/after effect on access, equity, service supply, and cost proxies.
Output: before/after impact table and map
Defend
Package the recommendation for leadership, the public, and funders, with the methodology and assumptions traced back to source.
Output: CSV, PDF, memo draft, methodology appendix
Monitor
Track the change after it goes live against the original projection using schedule and real-time data.
Output: post-implementation performance report
See the modules on your own network — free.
Open your agency on public data, no procurement required. When the team is ready, the Planner plan is $625/mo or $7,500/yr (card or PO), and the Agency plan adds operational connectors from $30,000/yr on invoice. Larger program? Email sales@headwayforge.com.